What did your student fees pay for anyway? Library access? The student association? The health center? Chances are that unless you’re a recent graduate (or you’re in school now), they didn’t include a mandatory “green fee,” a small charge of about $3 to $5 per semester that helps the university finance things like renewable energy and energy conservation technologies on campus.

I would have expected these extra fees to be a sore point with already maxed-out college students and their parents — even though they’re comparatively small when you stack them up against the majority of college expenses. Wrong. Today, Green Inc. featured a post on such fees and the rising number of students pushing to self-impose them.

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education maintains a list of universities with “green fees,” along with information about the fee rate, the percentage of students that approved the increase and details about where the money goes.