Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig nirc.edu. NS
Answer
nirc.edu. 5 NS ns29.1and1.com.
nirc.edu. 5 NS ns30.1and1.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0