Community colleges are often characterized as the segment of U.S. public higher education most responsive to environmental demands. During the past two decades of the twentieth century, community colleges faced expectations to expand their purposes beyond transfer and occupational education, to serve employers’ needs for training, and to accommodate more students in need of basic skills. Drawing on focus group data, this article examines what community college presidents characterize as the demand-response scenario for their colleges, the ways they work within it, and how they seek to move beyond it. The analysis focuses on their accounts of appropriate organizational responses, showing how institutional logics embedded in the wider context allowed for a range of legitimate responses yet also fostered ambiguity about their identity and societal role.
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