Anyone who has bought the latest textbook in, say, economics, knows that you need to haul a wheelbarrow full of dollars to the college book store.

Publishers insist that book prices have been holding steady in recent years, but most students would beg to differ. One thing students can do is to join maketextbooksaffordable.org, a student campaign to lower textbook costs. But they should not have to solve the problem on their own.

Help could be on the way. A congressional conference committee has begun work on the broader issue of the high cost of higher education. The conferees should embrace a House measure on textbooks that has been pushed by two California Congressmen– Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, a Republican, and Rep. George Miller, a Democrat.

The textbook provisions — contained in House bill H.R. 4137 — do not do anything drastic. But they should make it a lot easier for faculty, students, and parents to decide whether a particular textbook is worth the cost, and they should modestly help to drive down prices.

First, publishers would be required tell faculty how much their choices for textbooks will really cost the students. This would seem incredibly easy given Amazon.com, but many college professors routinely complain that basic information about the cost of textbooks is not easily available to them.

There’s a clear business logic behind this. A representative of the Public Interest Research Group describes the average textbook promotion to faculty members as resembling old-style restaurant menus for women that did not include prices. If professors don’t know the price (that they won’t be paying anyway), many will pick the most expensive thing on the menu.

The textbook industry has provided some help with price listings on the web. One source of information on texbook pricing comes courtesy of the American Publishers Association. But more information is needed.

Second, the House bill would require publishers to “unbundle” textbooks. Too many texts now come shrinkwrapped with CDs and other extras, driving up the cost. Publishers insist that these extras really help and argue that in some cases the CD is the real text, and the book is simply an accompanying manual. It should be obvious, however, when the book is the text, and in those cases students should not need to buy anything else.

Finally, and probably most important, the bill would require schools to post the list of required and recommended books long before students need to buy them. That would allow them enough time to shop for the best deals — online or in used bookstores.

Faculty should also be doing their part. Instead of assigning two expensive books and using just a few chapters of each, professors should order custom books with only the chapters they intend to assign.

Congress, though, should do what it can, because mounting textbook prices are one of a number of factors that are pushing higher education further out of reach of many young people.