Edu domain meant for the world,restricted to US

Generic TLDs are great for institutions with true international presence. Microsoft may be based in the US, but they have tons of employees and customers nearly everywhere so it makes sense to have a generic TLD. Same goes for non-profits like UNICEF, WWF, etc.<p>What about accredited four-year post-secondary institutions? Sure, plenty of universities have an overseas campus or two, but these institutions really belong under country code TLDs. Cambridge is in the UK, Harvard is in the US, Todai is in Japan.<p>So, what's the purpose of .edu? It's a legacy domain. US colleges and universities were a significant chunk of the internet in its early days; for years it was mostly college students and professors who had internet access. Since URLs shouldn't change, we're not going to ditch it, and for uniformity, we'll keep giving out .edu addresses according to the same old policies.<p>(Yes, a few grandfathered .edu domains don't fit the criteria. There are random institutions like museums and high schools in there.)

In the United Kingdom, we have a whole slab of second-level domains for specific purposes. .ac.uk for educational establishments beyond school, .sch.uk for schools, and .bl.uk for the national library. On top of that we even have ones like .police.uk, .parliament.uk, and soon .judiciary.uk. I believe Japan has a system like this too. I can't seeing it getting much use in either. Then again, not every country has this, so it probably should be released.

The de-facto standard has become "if it doesn't have a country code TLD" it is in the US" (e.g. .net, .com etc). I think the majority of users understand this, but it's not the way it should be. This is typical American insularity.<p>.edu should be a second level domain under country code TLDs. Here in Australia we use .edu.au. (e.g.: csu.edu.au, sydney.edu.au, unsw.edu.au etc). I don't think the TLD of .edu should be allowed unless you are an international education institution that is not tied physically to a single geographic location (e.g. Semester at Sea). Education institutions like to use short acronyms as their domain name and we would quickly experience a shortage of domain names if they all used the .edu TLD.

I often think that it would have been smarter to have dropped generic TLDs early on. As a result of various factors, it has now created an artificially constricted supply of virtual real estate that has an associated price demand pressure that is unlikely to ever ease.<p>My personal preference would be to see these disappear, to be replaced with more geographical focused TLDs. The .us ccTLD would have been the ideal replacement for US companies and educational establishments. .com.us and .edu.us as examples. Elsewhere in the world this is common and accepted.<p>For those in the US, or those who have a vested interest in the .com and .edu TLD, I imagine they would view such a suggestion with abject horror.

Many of the universities around here (Munich) got an edu domain (tum.edu (e. g. www.cs.tum.edu), hm.edu).<p>Really US-restricted TLDs, as far as I know, are mil, gov and pro.

So according to the article, it's not restricted to the US, it's just that the US decides who gets it and who doesn't. The article says the procedure is tedious, but I imagine it's strict so corrupt countries don't just start passing them out to anyway who can pay. People generally trust .edu domains, and they want to keep that reputation. For example, some places use .edu email addresses to identify and grant benefits to students.

Where is this quote from: “The .edu domain was originally intended for educational institutions anywhere in the world, when it was launched in 1985”? This seems historically dubious. While I appreciate the argument that all educational institutions should have access to the .edu TLD, like .com the original intention was likely for US. The US dominated the early history of the Internet (and still does).

I don't think the actual rules are as strict as the article states. The article says that only post-secondary institutions can get .edu addresses, but that's simply not true: the high school I went to has a .edu address, for example.

<a href="http://www.metu.edu" rel="nofollow">http://www.metu.edu</a> is a Turkish university, both in Turkey and TRNC. You can send me emails to my both email accounts user@metu.edu or user@metu.edu.tr Both are same.

I don't know how, but the Sabanci University from Turkey, has an edu domain too: <a href="http://www.sabanciuniv.edu/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sabanciuniv.edu/</a>

I was actually surprised to learn my home Uni here in Nigeria has a .edu domain<p><a href="http://www.uniben.edu/" rel="nofollow">http://www.uniben.edu/</a>

you don't understand. US <i>is</i> the world