The U.S. Congress passed the Higher Education Opportunity Act this summer, a bill that could help ease the burden of textbook expenses on college students.

The Wisconsin Student Public Interest Research Group has been campaigning since last fall for state legislation to curb the high cost of textbooks, but this new federal law renders a state law unnecessary.

The bill includes three provisions that could lower textbook costs.

It requires publishers to disclose prices to professors picking out textbooks, retailers to offer textbooks and supplementary materials “unbundled” and professors to provide a list of assigned textbooks when students register for classes.

According to UW-Madison senior Jared Forney, organizer of the WISPIRG campaign to reduce textbook costs, students would benefit from more time to shop for the best textbook prices and research suggests professors rarely use the material bundled with textbooks. He said the success of this bill is due to pressure placed on legislators by WISPIRG and similar student-run groups throughout the country.

“The student chapter of WISPIRG is a student-run organization. We pay for textbooks just like everybody else, and we all get the same feeling when we go empty our wallets at the cash register,” Forney said.

Forney said professors have shown support for lowering textbook costs and a survey he performed on staff and faculty on campus reveals over 90 percent of them would choose the less expensive of two books of equal quality for a class.

According to a statement, the bill, which goes into effect in 2010, is the first major undertaking by the federal government to decrease skyrocketing textbook prices.

“Until the bill goes into full effect we’re trying as much as we can to promote and have people aware of the legislation, so that when it does go into effect they can take full advantage of it,” Forney said.