Community colleges may fall short of the expectations made of them but they do so not by design but by lack of design. These expectations and assumptions, as commonly held by community college educators, students, and critics, include both positive and negative myths and realities. The assumptions that community college programs are inexpensive, that its students are only those who could not go elsewhere, that it brings success to students of all academic backgrounds, and that it was created to provide vocational-technical education, are myths. Lack of cohesion, orientation toward students, and active recruiting of the "new student" only in recent times, are realities. Community colleges will remain a force in society only to the degree that they (l) address the needs of a wide range of students, not just the successes; (2) find out why they lose students and how much of it is institutional fault; (3) actively seek the "new student"; (4) manage to maintain comprehensive offerings in the face of dollar shortage; (5) develop activities around which the student need to identify with the college can coalesce; (6) analyze formally whether the student orientation of the community college remains real; and (7) do not allow costs to rise to the point that students look elsewhere. By being less defensive and by sharing the results of institutional efforts, community colleges can cause some of the positive near-myths to become realities. (JDS)