The Volokh Conspiracy
[Eugene Volokh, February 16, 2005 at 3:25pm] Trackbacks
Forward-Thinking Universities:

I just noticed that a university other than UC was smart enough to snag uc.edu before UC did. Likewise, I've long noticed that one particular school is law.edu. If anyone has other examples of universities that have such domain names -- names that do match the school's name or field, but that seem to reflect the school's wisdom in being first to snag a name that other more prominent schools might have also wanted -- please leave them in the comments.

Brian (mail):
UT.edu for the University of Tampa instead of Tennessee, Texas, or even Toledo!
2.16.2005 3:58pm
Troy Hinrichs:
www.ut.edu is the University of Tampa. I was looking for the University of Texas (perhaps someone looking for Tenn. might make the same mistake).
2.16.2005 4:00pm
Arlus (mail):
All is relative, of course. Coming from southern Ohio, it would strike me as instinctually odd if "uc.edu" was associated with anything other than the University of Cincinnati. I can understand that Californians would have a different expectation. Because all schools presumably had the same opportunity to register domain names -- and I cannot believe the U. of Cincinnati was afforded special privileges denied to the U. of California system -- this exercise goes to show that those of from "flyover country" are not as behind the times as we are sometimes assumed to be.
2.16.2005 4:13pm
Ted (mail) (www):
Yeshiva University got yu.edu over Yale--perhaps because a boarding school got yeshiva.edu.

Not quite the same, but Southern California beat South Carolina to usc.edu, Ohio State beat Oklahoma State to osu.edu, Michigan State won the race to msu.edu, and Miami (Florida) beat Miami (Ohio). Each of those universities surely felt entitled to their particular abbreviation, just as UC did (which I think of as University of Chicago anyway).

A friend of a friend now working at TiVo made a nice tidy sum because he registered home.com and work.com -- for no other purpose than to segregate his e-mail accounts.

I'm an old enough fogey to remember Adam Curry registering mtv.com.
2.16.2005 5:05pm
Crime & Federalism (mail) (www):
A friend bought and received an unsolicited offer from a Midwestern state's business school (someone in marketing was prowling for catchy URLs?). My friend later sold it to someone else.
2.16.2005 5:28pm
Dustin:
Trinity University (my alma mater) in San Antonio got www.trinity.edu over several other two different (and better known) Trinity Colleges. It seems that we had a very forward thinking computer science department at the time.
2.16.2005 5:29pm
Bob (mail):
I don't know how coveted it actually is, but it matches the field of study. My alma mater is registered as mines.edu – formally, the Colorado School of Mines. Most other schools have either changed their name to end in “Tech” or “Technology.”
2.16.2005 5:40pm
Patrick McKenzie (mail):
Despite the US having over 100 colleges that start with "Washington", my alma matter (Washington University in St. Louis) got sniped on www.wu.edu by the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (Wirtschaftsuniversitat Wein, plus a couple of umlauts). We managed to get the coveted www.washu.edu some years ago, though (although everyones uses www.wustl.edu).
2.16.2005 6:22pm
IMMike:
As an alum of the University of Washington, i'm a little confused that no one seems to have snagged uw.edu. We're currently u.washington.edu. Several candidates for uw.edu - Wyoming, Wisconson, and other non-state schools. Washington State University was smart enough to get wsu.edu.
2.16.2005 6:27pm
E. S. (mail) (www):
Actually, I'm not certain that the University of California would have wanted uc.edu. The school is far more commonly known as UC Berkeley in the context of undergraduate and graduate education. California is how it's known in athletic circles. There's no real context, save official press releases, where Cal calls itself the University of California, or refers to itself in shorthand as UC, certainly not to the degree that, say, UCLA or USC do. I've even heard UCB more than UC. So rather than being beaten to the punch, it's far more likely that Cal deliberately chose www.berkeley.edu over www.uc.edu.

GO BEARS!
2.16.2005 8:04pm
Bill Bowser (mail):
Since the Univ. of Cincinnati is almost always referred to as UC here in southwest Ohio perhaps it is appropriate that they have the UC.EDU url. I suppose there are many Californians who would disagree.
2.16.2005 8:36pm
Anthony Argyriou:
Aside from the original campus of the Unversity of California, the UCs all have ucX.edu - ucla.edu, ucsf.edu. ucm.edu, ucr.edu, etc. Berkeley is berkeley.edu. Neither UC Berkeley, or the University of Colorado at Boulder has ucb.edu.

Santa Clara University changed its name from Univeristy of Santa Clara in the early 1980s, before most colleges had registered a domain name, and is now scu.edu, and didn't have to compete with University of Southern California for usc.edu. University of South Carolina is sc.edu.

I don't think any of these quite match what Eugene is looking for.
2.16.2005 8:56pm
DB (mail):
My undergrad alma mater is one of four schools in the US named for St. Ignatius Loyola, Loyola College in Maryland. Their domain is loyola.edu. They have it instead of Loyola New Orleans (loyno.edu), Loyola Chicago (luc.edu) and Loyola Marymount (lmu.edu). Interesting to note that the other three Loyolas all have associated law schools, and are most likely better known in the legal profession, at least, than my Loyola.
2.16.2005 10:00pm
David Krinsky (mail):
IMMike: uw.edu is owned by the University of Washington. It just doesn't seem to be set up to work as a web address right now.

Ted: Did Yale want yu.edu? It would never have occurred to me to look for it there; yale.edu is short and sweet. Along similar lines, hu.edu is owned by Harding University, in Searcy, Arkansas (which I'd never before heard of) rather than Harvard, but again "harvard.edu" seems the natural choice.

ub.edu is owned by the Universitat de Barcelona, which may or may not be that odd in terms of international prominence, but looks like a scoop since their main address is ub.es.

I can't think of who else might have wanted it, but it's always pleased me that the Smithsonian is si.edu.

I guess Virginia and Vermont go by UVM and UVa, respectively, but "uv.edu" is owned by the University of the Visayas, in Cebu City, Philippines.
2.16.2005 10:05pm
Adrianne Truett (www):
AmericanCollege.edu for the small school in Madurai in southern India would have to be my favorite.
2.16.2005 10:06pm
Alexander (mail):
In defense of Yeshiva, here in New York it's universally known as YU (Why me?) whereas I have never heard of Yale being referred to by this acronym. It's short enough as it is.
2.16.2005 10:11pm
Alexander (mail):
In defense of Yeshiva, here in New York it's universally known as YU (Why me?) whereas I have never heard of Yale being referred to by this acronym. It's short enough as it is.
2.16.2005 10:11pm
Alexander (mail):
In defense of Yeshiva, here in New York it's universally known as YU (Why me?) whereas I have never heard of Yale being referred to by this acronym. It's short enough as it is.
2.16.2005 10:12pm
Alexander (mail):
In defense of Yeshiva, here in New York it's universally known as YU (Why me?) whereas I have never heard of Yale being referred to by this acronym. It's short enough as it is.
2.16.2005 10:12pm
Alexander (mail):
In defense of Yeshiva, here in New York it's universally known as YU (Why me?) whereas I have never heard of Yale being referred to by this acronym. It's short enough as it is.
2.16.2005 10:12pm
Dave Milovich (mail) (www):
IMMike: the University of Washington has uw.edu; they're just not using it to host a webpage. One can see this by doing a DNS lookup; if you aren't familiar with a command line method of doing this, then try a site like this one.
2.16.2005 10:23pm
Matt L (mail):
My alma mater, Boise State University, wasn't able to get www.bsu.edu, as the even more obscure Ball State University had that. I can't remember what the url was when I was there, but now it's the clummsy www.boisestate.edu. Easy to remember, but a bit long. (I guess since Boise State decided to put all of their energy into football a few years back they are no longer completely obscure, but that was several years after I graduated.)
2.16.2005 11:00pm
Eric Barnhill:
I teach at the Westchester Conservatory of Music - owners of BOTH musiced.org and musicconservatory.org. Schweeeet!
2.16.2005 11:16pm
Buck Turgidson (mail):
Not exactly a university thing, but consider
FREEINSTITUTIONS.ORG

One would assume that this would be some conservative intellectual racket. But it's not:

It's the Friends of Refugees of Eastern Europe AKA The Chabad Lubavitch Russian Immigrant Program.

Who knew!
2.16.2005 11:33pm
James Ellis (mail):
Tampa is my winner in the "race to the registry" sweepstakes. I too logged on assuming I was going to UT. Second place goes to--Marquette University. There must be a lot of M's out there. As for Yale, it seems they were simply beaten to the punch by Ball State. I bet a lot of browsers end up at the wrong website.

Related question: have any prominent universities skipped straight to the mascot, such as eli.edu, crimson.edu, bruins.edu, et cetera. Has there been a race to the registry there, too?
2.17.2005 1:28am
Aeon J. Skoble (mail):
I teach at Bridgewater State College in MA, and we are obliged to use the somewhat-contrived domain bridgew.edu, as Birmingham-Southern College has bsc.edu. But whether that's because they got there first, or someone here thought bridgew was a good idea, I couldn't say.
2.17.2005 6:47am
Gary McGath (www):
notredame.edu gets Notre Dame College in Manchester, NH, as opposed to that obscure school in Indiana.
2.17.2005 8:29am
F.W. Burger (mail):
I don't think there's been too much of a rush to register the mascot names; even with Arizona, Kansas State, Kentucky, Northwestern and Villanova as possible claimants, wildcats.edu seems to be unused.
2.17.2005 11:01am
Paul N (mail):
www.university.edu is for "Central State University", a private school in Riverside, CA - nice snag guys!

www.college.edu redirects to futuredegree.org, a commercial site - how did they pull that off?
2.17.2005 12:17pm
ss:
Central State University may have taken "university.edu" because Chicago State already took "csu.edu." Colorado state was left with "colostate.edu" yuk. Looks like it could be a site dedicated to unpleasant intestinal discharge.

Of the thirteen or so "Concordia" universities or colleges, Concordia University of Austin, TX got "concordia.edu".

Arcadia College (until recently, Beaver College) still nabs college-bound porn surfers with the URL "beaver.edu".
2.17.2005 1:39pm
NickM (mail) (www):
www.tech.edu is owned by a college, although there is no site presently at that name.
The registrant is not Texas Tech, Cal Tech, Georgia Tech, Louisiana Tech, Virginia Tech, or any similar school, it's
Directorate Of Traning And
C block vikas bhawan ITO
New Delhi Delhi 110002
INDIA

www.hastings.edu is Hastings College of Nebraska, rather than Hastings Law School (UC Hastings), which has www.uchastings.edu (www.uch.edu belongs to University of Colorado Hospital).

www.csu.edu belongs not to Colorado State or the California State University system, but to Chicago State University.

www.um.edu is a reserved domain held by the IANA, with no site connected to it. The competition among universities over this one could be fierce.

University of South Dakota beat out University of San Diego for www.usd.edu.

Surprisingly, no one owns www.gw.edu, so you too can siphon off traffic from George Washington University (as well as being the proud owner of a 2 letter domain name).

University of Virginia uses www.virginia.edu, but also owns www.uva.edu (which has a redirect on it).
2.17.2005 1:39pm
Scott (www):

I agree with the poster above who notes that locally (and I mean locally in the broad sense - I'm in Columbus), the University of Cincinnati is referred to as "U-C", probably because "University of Cincinnati" is a mouthful. Interestingly, Ohio State owns both ohio-state.edu and osu.edu, which I am sure the Cowboys of Oklahoma State (www.okstate.edu) are none too happy about.

And for what it's worth, apparently Berkeley has owned that domain since 1985; the Univ of Cinci has only owned its domain since 1987. So it seems that UC Berkeley got the domain that it desired.
2.17.2005 4:07pm
Phillip Carter (mail) (www):
The irony here, of course, is that the University of California was home to the original nodes of "ARPAnet" -- the forerunner to today's Internet. The original 4 nodes were UCLA, Stanford, Berkeley and MIT. Given that the UC was so intimately involved with the creation of the Internet, you'd think they could've snagged the uc.edu address. It would make a good address for all the systemwide UC offices, which now use the awkward address of ucop.edu, for UC Office of the President.
2.17.2005 4:11pm
carl (mail):
My father teaches at a Washington Bible College, a little college outside D.C. The website they grabbed was www.bible.edu.
2.17.2005 6:06pm
Jay Gilbert (mail):
A side note: Not only was University of Cincinnati first to grab the domain www.uc.edu, but the Cincinnati Enquirer owns www.enquirer.com. You know, backward, behind-the-times, hicksville Cincinnati.

My daughter now works at Rockefeller Center. A native co-worker asked her if Cincinnati has sidewalks. Yes, we do, and not a few domain names.
2.18.2005 5:24pm
R. Alex (mail) (www):
ISU was swiped by Idaho State University instead of the better known Iowa State U.
2.19.2005 10:44am
David Illingworth II:
I am in my second year here at the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America, or simply "Catholic" as it's known here in D.C. I was just discussing this with a professor yesterday, and neither of us can figure out how the school grabbed "law.edu." Maybe they were the first law school on the web? Who knows?
2.19.2005 1:52pm
David Illingworth II:
I am in my second year here at the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America, or simply "Catholic" as it's known here in D.C. I was just discussing this with a professor yesterday, and neither of us can figure out how the school grabbed "law.edu." Maybe they were the first law school on the web? Who knows?
2.19.2005 1:52pm
David Smallberg (mail):
It's no surprise that usc.edu is the University of Southern California instead of South Carolina: the domain naming scheme (.edu, .com, etc.) was developed by Paul Mockapetris at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute.
2.20.2005 4:01am

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