Campus portals: come to higher education: these everything-in-one-place web sites can streamline administrative and student services and could save institutions money

Matrix: The Magazine for Leaders in Education, June, 2001 by Robert Moskowitz

Acquisition and Implementation

While portals involve complex technologies, their cost is relatively low. Advertising-supported systems can pay for themselves. One early portal business model was to give the software free to institutions, then lace the portal's pages with advertising.

Vendors like Blackboard and PeopleSoft tend to bundle their portal systems with their existing offerings, because the portals are part of the campus-wide system the universities have already purchased from these vendors. Companies that specialize in portal design can charge as much as $250,000. But, the acquisition cost is only a fraction of the total implementation expense.

For example, the University of Wisconsin will spend millions for implementation and development during the life of its portal system. Much of that cost will go to making other applications accessible through the portal. New software is usually written with the Web in mind, but integrating a school's standalone systems (often legacies from 20 years ago) and its data can be time-consuming and expensive.

"A portal supports staff, alumni, students, faculty and others," says Blackboard's Pittinsky. "It's the common interface for all the services each of these constituencies cares about on campus."

Bottom Line Benefits

Portals lower the cost of delivering student services by leveraging the time and effort of students and faculty, who can use the portal to complete forms online for automated processing, reducing the need for administrative staff time.

Another benefit is the students' ability to pay fees online. This can generate higher collections, often through debit cards that have lower transaction fees than credit cards.

A school's return on investment from its portal falls into three broad categories, says Curtiss Barnes, senior director of product management at Campus Pipeline:

* Stakeholder Experience Enhancements. These include Web based e-mail accessible from any connected computer, as well as improved communications flow on campus. A registrar, for example, can identify which students need to register next week and send targeted e-mail to that group.

* Operational Improvements. The ability to target announcements to specific groups or clubs reduces communications costs and delays and improves effectiveness. Most schools use Web course tools to supplement the traditional classroom, giving faculty more ways to communicate with students and providing a single source for students to find what they need to know.

* Cost Savings. Okanagan University College in Canada saved $30,000 a year when it began distributing grades through its portal instead of mailing them out. This is just one way a portal can save schools money.