Since 2001, new registrants for second-level domain names have been required to be United States–affiliated institutions of higher education.

[4] In 2001, the Commerce Department entered into a five-year agreement with Educause making that organization the registrar for the .edu domain.

[7] In 1993, a decision attributed to Jon Postel limited new registrations in the edu domain to four-year postsecondary educational institutions.

"[9] The museum's Internet registrar allowed it to sidestep the then-extant domain-naming rules by using edu despite not being an academic institution and by using a name with more than 12 characters.

[4] In 1999 an article in Mother Earth News quoted an authority on distance education as saying, "Anyone who has the necessary $70 can register an edu domain name and use it to archive any type of enterprise on the Internet.

[13] To be eligible, an institution must be located in the U.S., legally organized in the U.S., or recognized by a U.S. state, territorial, or federal agency.

These measures, together with the imposition of registration fees, were intended to reduce the number of inactive or ineligible edu domain names.