Unrecognized schools with ".edu" designation

The talk about 'calcoast.edu' reminded me to check in our database of more than 2,500 degree-granting schools without recognized accreditation, to see how many of them had the ".edu" designation.

From Adam Smith to Zoe, the remarkable number is 262.

Further evidence, alas, of the uselessness of ".edu" as any indicator of quality or usefulness.

 

Which means 90% of the schools with an edu designation have recognized accreditation. Not a guarantee of quality, but perhaps not totally useless.

 

Re: Re: Unrecognized schools with ".edu" designation

Possibly true, but it should tell the general public that if they don't recognize the name of the school (or if it doesn't sound quite right), they should do further research.




Tom Nixon

 

Re: Re: Unrecognized schools with ".edu" designation

In librarianship authority of sources is of prime importance. While most of the .edu institutions are fine, and the information found there can relied upon. However there are rogue schools that spoil the domain for the good guys. Before Educause took over the registry in 2001 .edu TLD domain names were given out to almost anyone.

Similarly we know that .com, .org, .net, .biz, .info and .name may or may not be authoritative.

However the vetting behind such top level domains as .int (international such as www.un.int or www.upu.int ) .museum ( obviously for museums such as smithsonian.museum ).mil for US Military ( such as www.army.mil ) .aero for aeronautical organizations (such as www.klm.aero ) or .coop for cooperatives (credit unions and the like such as floridacentral.coop )

Of course the most widely know authoritative top-level domain is .gov. Everything from a .gov website can be deemed authoritative as it all comes from the US Government. You may not agree with it, but it is authoritatively the government’s statement or position on the topic.

Country specific top-level domains offer no guarantee of authority. .us can be obtained by anyone, as can most other country 2 letter top-level domains. In fact .com was taken for my last name so I chose Christmas Island's top-level domain .cx for my personal site.

Some countries follow the .gov, .ac (for academic as opposed to .edu) .com domain hierarchy within their 2 letter country top-level domain. Mexico's presidential website is at www.presidencia.gob.mx (.gob substitutes for gov because of translation.) However the authority of these does not always match the authority of the .gov (or .gob) or .ac of other countries. (Mexico's policy does match the authority of the domains but all of them don't)

This is yet another bit of research I did in library school, geez I am a geek.

 

No.

90% of unrecognized schools do not have .edu.

But of the schools with .edu, much more than 90% are legitimate.

 

The .edu domain was originally set up to designate 4-year colleges/universities and other types of educational institutions (such as the Smithsonian www.si.edu). K-12 education and community colleges were initially denied access to this domain (although many community colleges were able to get an .edu years before this policy was reversed).

No assessement of the institution's accreditation or policy was ever attempted before awarding the .edu domain. This has resulted in numerous non-accredited colleges being listed as xxxx.edu, as Dr. Bear reports. Since many RA institutions are now utilizing .com or .net domains for many of their functions, having a .edu address is not a reliable indicator of quality

Tony Pina
Faculty, Cal State U. San Bernardino

 

Chronicle article

Don't Judge a College by Its Internet Address: Ending in .edu does not necessarily mean an institution is accredited, Dan Carnevale, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 26, 2004. (Requires paid subscription)

The article quotes Allen Ezell: "It's just one more disguise they can use to blend in with the legitimate .edu institutions"; Alan Contreras: "What we are suffering from there is a vertebrae shortfall"; John Bear: "I think Educause has totally abdicated their duty."

G

 

Personally, I don't have a big problem with the .edu domain being used simply to provide a general indication that the website belongs to an educational institution of some sort.

There are all kinds of educational institutions out there. Many of them don't offer academic degrees at all.

The .com domain doesn't imply anything about the status of a company's SEC filings or he suitability of its products, so I don't know that .edu has to imply accreditation either.

Frankly, it seems foolish in the extreme to treat a website domain registration as if it were a license that makes questions about a prospective school unnecessary.

 

Those who purchased ".edu" domain names prior to it being restricted to educational institutions, were grandfathered in, and allowed to keep their names.

 

Whether or not a country-specific or country-coded top level domain (known in the domain registration business as "ccTLD" -- as opposed to "gTLD" which is what .COM and .NET and .ORG, etc., are) has any "authority," in the sense that you're using the word, here, depends on the country. Of the 300-plus ccTLDs that have been created, some thirty or so aren't even used. Iraq's ccTLD, for example, is .IQ (a sort of oxymoron in its own right... but I digress) that is not being used at all, by anyone, at the moment... for what should be fairly obvious reasons. Domain registrars are no different than anyone else in their desire not to have mortar shells whizzing past their ears; or not to have videos of their heads being lopped off appear on the Internet. They're kinda' funny that way. Maybe when things calm down there... naaaah. (But I'm digressing again.)

When ccTLDs were created, most countries wanted to confine their ownership strictly to those within their geographic borders. Most did, and still do. But some countries, their mamas having raised no fools, figured-out fairly quckly that their particular ccTLDs might actually have some worldwide market value. The tiny islands of Tuvalu, for example, quickly figured out that TV stations might want to use their .TV ccTLD; or The Federated States of Micronesia figured out that certain radio stations might want to put their call letters in front of the .FM ccTLD, just for grins. So those countries set up international offices of commercial domain name authority and registration (or licenced the ccTLD to a commercial "agent/operator"), and they began making their ccTLDs available to large, ICANN-approved registrars the world over -- to be marketed not as the ccTLDs of any particular country but, rather, as special ccTLDs that have special and obvious marketing meaning and value (like the aforementioned .TV or .FM).

And, indeed, with such ccTLDs, anyone can register them; and there is, therefore, no "authority," per se... at least not as the word is being used here.

But a great many countries -- most of them, in fact -- believe in the notion of keeping the use of their ccTLDs racially or ethnically or nationally pure -- even when they're arguably sitting atop a proverbial pot-o-gold and could make all kinds of money by licensing their ccTLDs like Tuvalu and Micronesia did.

For example, is there anyone in the computer business who cannot instantly recognize the potential worth and appropriateness of information-technology-related web sites utilizing Italy's coveted .IT ccTLD? You'd think Italy would want to cash-in! But, alas, one may only legally obtain an .IT ccTLD if one either lives physically in, or has one's business physically located in, the boundaries of Italy -- or at least that's how it was for a long time. Today, anyone residing in (or whose business resides in) any of around 28 different EU States can regiser a domain using the .IT ccTLD. But my larger point is, nevertheless, made. But for a long time, only Italians could use the .IT ccTLD, despite its world market value; and similar rules still apply in most countries.

So, since most countries choose to do things Italy's way (or at least the way Italy used to do it), there is a certain "authority" (as the word is being used, here) which automatically attaches to most ccTLDs in that one may -- with several exceptions, obviously -- generally presume that a web site bearing a given country's ccTLD is more likely than not to be owned by a person or business that is actually physically located in said ccTLD's country.

Click here to see a complete list of ccTLDs and their countries, arranged in order from most-used to least-used. It is from continuously-updated lists like this that print and TV journalists get their numbers when they write in an article or report on TV that a certain top-level domain name (i.e., a certain gTLD or ccTLD) has "X" number of domains registered.

But I'm digressing again.

Your words, not mine.

Absolutely! This entire discussion of judging an institution by whether or not its web site utilizes the .EDU gTLD is ludicrous. Who ever suggested that the presence of the .EDU gTLD was the definitive indicator in the first place? It's just silly. There is only one meaningful, fast, truly authoritative way to check USDoE/CHEA-approved accreditation, and that's on the CHEA web site.

I once used a stop watch, and even with a slow 56kbps modem operating at around 41kbps, I was repeatedly able to look-up virtually any institution one could name via the the CHEA web site -- whether by using the method of spelling-out said institution's name, or by looking at statewide alphabetical lists -- in 35 to 50 seconds each. Over and over and over again. And I started the timer when I clicked in the brower's "Address:" field and began typing www.chea.org therein; and stopped it when the correct results page finished painting in the browser window and the little "Done" word appeared in the absolute lower-left therein. Only 35 to 50 seconds. Over and over and over again. Time in. Time out. Only 35 to 50 seconds. Predictably.

If a prospective adult (or even teenaged) student can't take one lousy minute (or, usually, even less) to see on the CHEA web site if a given institution is accredited by a USDoE/CHEA-approved agency, then I say that that said prospective student deserves whatever s/he gets!

Or should we make sure s/he looks both ways before crossing the street, too?

Yes! Exactly! So we're in complete agreement, then. Imagine that.

A huge mistake, in my opinion. Educause should have sent a certified letter to everyone who didn't qualify and told them in no uncertain terms what the new rules were going to be, and how long they would have before their .EDU gTLD would be taken from them with absolutely no recourse -- I would have recommended one (1) year's notice.

If anything by way of compensation, Educause could have (but was by no means under any obligation to) set up a deal with a registrar to obtain alternative commercial gTLDs inexpensively; or, perhaps even better yet, Educause should have cut a deal with ICANN to offer the edu.com and/or the edu.org gTLD alternatives -- which, if you think about it, would have been wholly more appropriate and informative in precisely the way that everyone here is now lamenting that the presence of the .EDU gTLD is not!

Each recovered .EDU gTLD should have been pointed at a placeholder page which simply informed the site visitors thereto that the .EDU gTLD they were trying to reach was taken away from the institution that had been using it because said institution no longer qualified under Educause's new rules. Said page should stay up for at least a year -- probably two or maybe even three.... but no longer. Thereafter, the .EDU gTLDs would be returned to the pool and issued to whichever qualifying institutions wanted them on either a first-come/first-served basis or a combination of first-come/first-served and obvious appropriatenes (i.e., "harvard.edu" should be issued to Yale University, even if Yale asked for it first, etc.).

Those that had heeded Educause's warning would have had the entire year to get their site and its new gTLD or ccTLD just as high up in the various search engine rankings as their site was back when it was using the .EDU gTLD.

But, of course, that didn't happen, did it?

I could not agree more.

But even if Educause hadn't dropped the ball; even if every .EDU gTLD in use belonged, rightly, to an institution fully accredited by an agency approved by USDoE/CHEA, I would still argue that any prospective student who can't take a lousy minute or so to verify a given institution's accreditation status directly on the CHEA web site gets what s/he deserves!

Doing otherwise is like assuming that every car on the road that's painted "Cadillac Deep Forest Green Metallic" must be a Cadillac.

What... they never heard of Maaco?

Sheesh!