I’ve noticed over the past year that one-page Web sites are becoming more and more popular. One-page sites are particularly well suited for creative portfolios, but I wonder if they might also prove useful for higher education.

When done well, a single-page site can be quite satisfying in its zen-like simplicity. No drilling into sub pages or clicking on the back button; no risk of missing any critical content, because it all unveils in front of you with the flick of the scroll wheel. There’s also a Web 2.0 appeal to these sites; when clicking is needed, AJAX can be used so that content is revealed dynamically, rather than loading a new page — this site is a perfect example.

The one-page micro site is a great fit for academic department pages, which are typically plagued with far too many links and sub sections. Wouldn’t it be refreshing if all of a department’s critical information was displayed in one clean, scrollable page, instead of being broken up into a dozen (and frequently redundant) sub pages? Or how about audience-specific gateway pages? Nearly every university Web site has these pages, but they are rarely very effective (with a few notable exceptions). What if prospective students were presented with a reassuringly simple page with lots of tightly-written content and no potential for navigational confusion?

The simplicity of one-page sites will likely appeal to traditional-aged students because they’re already used to that format: Ever browsed a MySpace or Facebook profile? They are usually single, scrollable pages with very few external links. In the case of MySpace, these pages are also usually breathtakingly ugly, but that’s a topic for another day!

So, what do you think? Does the one-page site have a future in higher education?