.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.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).
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.
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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