Tuesday, November 21, 2000

Community Colleges Step Up Fight to Use '.edu' Internet Addresses By JEFFREY R. YOUNG Community colleges have stepped up their fight for the right to use World Wide Web addresses ending in ".edu" -- an increasingly coveted distinction as colleges and companies compete for distance-education students online. As it stands, two-year colleges are excluded from the ".edu" Internet domain, which government rules reserve for "four-year, degree-granting colleges and universities." Instead, most community colleges use addresses that include ".cc" followed by a state and country code. Iowa's Indian Hills Community College, for instance, goes by "www.ihcc.cc.ia.us." Late last month, the American Association of Community Colleges took its case to the U.S. Department of Commerce, which oversees Internet-address registration in partnership with an international nonprofit group called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. In a letter to a Commerce Department official, the association's president, George R. Boggs, wrote that community colleges were "extremely frustrated by their inability to routinely access the .edu domain." The letter urged that government officials quickly hand control of the ".edu" domain to Educause, an academic-technology consortium whose leaders say it would probably expand access to the ".edu" domain. Since 1997, Educause officials have been pressing the government to let them administer ".edu" addresses. In a letter to the community-college association last week, the Commerce Department said it was working on choosing a new administrator for the ".edu" domain, and that it would "require that the new administrator have strong ties to the higher-education community." The letter also said that the new administrator would be directed to "work with" colleges to develop policies for the ".edu" domain "that would better address the needs of community colleges." Karen Rose, the Commerce Department official overseeing the issue, said in an interview Monday that finding a new administrator for the ".edu" domain is "one of our highest priorities." She said that the department hopes to complete the process "as soon as possible," and that officials plan to hand off the ".edu" administrative duties by December 2001 at the latest. Educause's bid for the ".edu" duties has "widespread support in the higher-education community," said Mark Luker, a vice president of the organization. "The present [address] system is a legacy of when the Internet was still for research and development," he added. Competition for distance-learning students online has made the Internet-address issue of even greater importance to community colleges, Mr. Luker said. Some two-year colleges fear that their inability to use the official academic addresses makes it more difficult for students to find the institutions' virtual campuses. The community-college association also outlined its complaint in an earlier letter to Network Solutions, the company that currently handles the registration process for ".edu" addresses under a contract with the Commerce Department. "Preventing our institutions from receiving the '.edu' designation, with its extraordinary symbolic resonance, represents a significant stigma," the organization said in its letter to the company. "Also, this refusal is ironic, given community colleges' embrace of technology, particularly in the area of distance education." The association also charges that Network Solutions has been inconsistent in enforcing the rules forthe ".edu" domain. More than 200 community colleges have been granted ".edu" addresses, said David S. Baime, director of government relations for the community-college association. Many other two-year colleges, however, have been denied the addresses. Cheryl Regan, a spokeswoman for Network Solutions, said that she was unfamiliar with the association's letter or its specific charges. But she said that the company followed the rules set out by the government for ".edu" domain requests. She added that Network Solutions does not have the authority to change those guidelines. Background article from The Chronicle: Academic-Technology Consortium Continues Push to Take Charge of '.edu' Domain (9/3/1999) Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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