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'.edu' ('edu'cation) is the generic top-level domain for educational institutions, primarily those in the United States.

Contents

History

Accreditation

Registry

References

External links

History

Created in January 1985 as one of the first top-level domains, .edu was originally intended for educational institutions anywhere in the world. With few exceptions, however, only those in the United States registered such domains, while educational institutions in other countries usually used domain names under the appropriate country code TLD. In some countries a second-level domain is used to indicate an educational institutions (''e.g.'' .edu.mx in Mexico, .edu.au in Australia, .ac.uk and .sch.uk in the United Kingdom) and in others only the country code is used (''e.g.'' in Canada, Germany and France). In Germany, the second-level domain often has a prefix indicating the kind of institution (''uni'' for ''Universität'', ''fh'' for ''Fachhochschule'', for instance www.uni-erfurt.de and www.fh-erfurt.de) or, if there are several institutions of the same type, the abbreviation of the institutions name (for instance www.fu-berlin.de, www.tu-berlin.de and www.hu-berlin.de for the three Berlin universities).
Examples of non-US .edu domain is the French polytechnique.edu, the Belgian solvay.edu, the Swedish korteboskolan.edu, Kosovo uni-pr.edu, the Indian nist.edu or the Thai au.edu. Many institutions whose primary sites are located in local second-level domains run mirror sites in the .edu domain, such as oxford.edu mirroring ox.ac.uk, or monash.edu mirroring monash.edu.au.

Accreditation

Starting on October 29, 2001, only post-secondary institutions that are accredited by an agency on the U.S. Department of Education's list of nationally recognized accrediting agencies are eligible to apply for a .edu domain.^[1] Most such agencies accredit only US institutions, so very few non-US institutions qualify, and .edu remains almost exclusively a top-level domain of the United States.
Note that the current eligibility requirements apply only to 'new' applicants. Several non-qualifying institutions retain their .edu domains obtained before the current rules came into force. Examples of these include Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a public secondary school at tjhsst.edu, the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy at imsa.edu, and the University of the West Indies, an international university, at uwi.edu. Other non-post-secondary institutions with .edu domains include Phillips Exeter Academy, a private secondary school at www.exeter.edu; Montgomery Blair High School, a public magnet high school in Montgomery County, MD (located at mbhs.edu); Phillips Academy Andover, a private secondary school at www.andover.edu; the Brookings Institution, a research and policy institute at www.brook.edu; the Smithsonian Institution, a national museum ("America's national educational facility") at www.si.edu; the J. Paul Getty Trust, an international cultural and philanthropic organization in Los Angeles, California at www.getty.edu; Educause, "a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology" at www.educause.edu; the Franklin Institute Science Museum, a museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at www.fi.edu; the Exploratorium, a science museum in San Francisco, California, at www.exploratorium.edu; the Institutes of Medicine, an academy associated with the National Academy of Sciences, at www.iom.edu; the Folger Shakespeare Library, a library in Washington, D.C., at www.folger.edu; and the Space Telescope Science Institute, the organization that selects the science program for the Hubble Space Telescope, at www.stsci.edu; Psiimond Network Services, a private web design company at www.pns.edu. Five Colleges, Inc., a consortium of five institutions of higher education in Massachusetts, is not a conventional university but maintains www.fivecolleges.edu.
The restriction to post-secondary institutions does not apply to the corresponding domains in some other countries. For example, the British .ac.uk second-level domain is also used by Further Education colleges, museums, learned societies and UCAS.

Registry

Educause is the authoritative registry provider for .edu, and is also its exclusive registrar as .edu is a closed system. The applying institution must apply directly to Educause and show proof of their accredidation, only then will they be given a domain name. While Educause is a non-profit agency, it does charge an annual fee for each domain name. All of the money that is made from these fees goes into the costs of maintaining the infrastructure for .edu. Educause, as the sole registrar, resolves domain name disputes and all other policy matters for .edu. Ultimate authority for .edu rests with the US Department of Commerce. As far as the actual technical administration, Educause directly runs and maintains the technical components for the registrar and registration portion of the operation in-house, but they contract out the operation of the registry nameservers for the domain, currently, to VeriSign's Registry hosting services.

References

1. Eligibility for the .edu Domain FAQ

External links

★ .edu Home Page

★ .edu Domain Space (U.S. Department of Commerce)

★ IANA .edu whois information

★ RFC 920 defined .edu and the other original top-level domains.

★ Database for Accreditation in the United States (CHEA)

★ Database for Accreditation in the United States (USDE)