Portals are taking off on campuses nationwide. According to "Campus Computing 2006," the Campus Computing Project's survey of 540 two- and four-year public and private colleges and universities across the US, portal deployment for four-year public residential universities jumped from 28 to 74 percent of responding institutions between the 2002-2006 academic years; from 20 to 38 percent for private four-year universities; and from 23 to 43 percent for community colleges. Yet, as more and more campuses buy into the promise of single sign-on and integration of information and services, needs and realities of implementation can diverge. To get a better sense of the "state of the portal" in higher education, this article takes a look at the differing stages of maturity and the wide range of technology choices in the portal journey.