.edu

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.edu

Introduced	1985
TLD type	Generic top-level domain
Status	Active
Registry	Educause
Sponsoring organization	Not technically sponsored, but Educause is a nonprofit organization
Intended use	Educational institutions
Actual use	Accredited post-secondary institutions, almost entirely within the United States of America
Registration restrictions	Must be accredited by an agency on the U.S. Department of Education's list of Nationally recognized accrediting agencies. Some older registrations are grandfathered.
Structure	Registrations at second level permitted
Documents	RFC 920; RFC 1591; US Department of Commerce agreement
Dispute policies	Educause may revoke registrations if policy provisions are violated.
Web site	.edu Home Page

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

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 and Germany). An example of a non-US .edu domain is the French polytechnique.edu.

Under the present system, 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. Most such agencies accredit only US institutions, so very few non-US institutions qualify, and .edu remains an almost exclusively American top-level domain.

Note that the current eligibility requirements only apply to new applicants. Several non-qualifying institutions retain their .edu domains obtained before the current rules came into force (for example, Detroit Country Day School is a kindergarten through 12th-grade institution, but has the Internet address http://www.dcds.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.

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