Internet users know Yahoo, Excite, Microsoft Network, and America Online as popular Internet portals. As such, these super Web site destinations and online services provide users a comprehensive collection of services, including search engines and tools; access to products, auctions, and classified advertising; free e-mail accounts and even free Internet service and networking tools such as chat rooms. 

The portal concept is best recognized in the context of mass market Web sites, such as Yahoo and Excite, and online services, such as America Online. But colleges and universities are beefing up their Internet technology and Web presence to offer internal campus portals to their students, administrators, faculty, and alumni. This Intranet system is a computer network based on Internet technology that is designed to be accessible only to members of an organization. 

While usually accessible through a school’s home page, a campus Intranet portal aggregates both academic and electronic commerce functions into a single Web-based destination, providing users with a broad array of services such as Web-based course registration, and online access to financial aid records, grades and course Web pages.

“We‘re very interested in giving our [students, faculty, administrators and alumni] access to these portal tools, but it has to be affordable,” says Sylvester Oliver, chief technology officer at Rust College in Mississippi. Oliver notes that campus Intranet portal development can range from several hundred thousand to several million dollars in cost.

In an effort to tap potentially lucrative advertising and electronic commerce opportunities, ambitious startup companies have been developing campus portals at little or no cost for colleges and universities over the past two years. Mindful of limited campus budgets for information technology, these companies have agreed to build campus portals in exchange for the rights to sell advertising space on campus portal Web pages. The companies are also getting commissions on products and services sold to individuals who make their purchases through campus portals.

According to Forrester Research in Massachusetts, young adults between the ages of 16 and 22 will spend $4.5 billion online in 2000. Nearly 47 percent of college students are buying online, compared to 26 percent of high school students.

The best-known developer of campus Intranet portals is the Salt Lake City-based Campus Pipeline, Inc. The fast-growing startup has licensed its Web platform software to more than 500 institutions since its founding in 1998. Universities that opt not to have corporate sponsors have to pay for the service.

In early April, StudentOnline.com, a New York-based campus Intranet systems company, sponsored an Intranet portal briefing for a group composed mostly of Black college officials. Company officials announced a grant program that would provide software and hardware at 10 colleges and universities for development of a campus portal. The program, known as the Information Technology Grant, will provide services and products to be valued from $100,000 to $500,000 per school, according to company officials.

“We see the community of historically Black institutions as an important market for our product,” says Sachin Chaudhry, a co-founder of StudentOnline.com. “We believe that Black institutions will be interested in the low-cost IT solutions that we offer.”

To differentiate itself from its competitors, StudentOnline.com develops campus portals that are free of advertising and can be accessed by wireless telephone devices. 

The grant program, whose awardees will be announced this month, is supporting schools that want development of an on-site campus Intranet portal, according to Chaudhry.