The kids might be on summer holiday, but attention has returned to student credit card lending after the Federal Reserve last week published an extensive database on the personal finance product.

I played with the data a bit today and what I found was that college credit card lending, which includes to students and alumni, is dominating by a Bank of America unit, FIA Card Services N.A. FIA, a legacy MBNA Americas business, controls 92% of the top 20 student credit cards, which cumulatively account for nearly 465,000 credit card accounts. That total includes the No. 1 student credit card by total accounts open at the end of 2010: the Penn State Alumni Association card. The Penn State card counts more than 70,000 accounts. In total, of the slightly more than 1,000 active college credit card programs out in the US, 84.4% are issued by FIA, a staggering marketshare.

(Interestingly, just last week FIA sold some of its portfolio to Regions Bank.)

College credit card lending isn’t exactly big business. According to Fed numbers, there were a total of 1.7 million or so college credit card accounts open at the end of last year — not a huge number. Total accounts fell 15% last year from the 2009 tally of about 2 million.

Interestingly, the issuers pay the universities or colleges associated with their card programs, and those payments in 2010 totaled more than $73 million, down from $83.5 million in 2009. In higher education, every penny counts — and that total includes a lot of pennies.