This literature review focuses on the role of the community college in meeting the needs of adults seeking assistance in mid-life career changes. Factors such as longer life spans, better health, increased leisure time, and greater emphasis upon the quality of life increase the need for mid-life vocational counseling, leisure counseling programs, widow/widowers counseling, and pre-retirement workshops, as well as, the need for availability of lifelong educational opportunities. Family, job, and societal pressures can be seen to interact and produce four career patterns: routine (absence of career change), self-determined (career change because of desire rather than necessity), situationally determined (change brought about by outside pressures), and self-directed accommodation (change influenced by environmental pressures but shaped by individual choice). An assessment of the career pattern involved is one of the first steps in finding a second career, and one in which community college counseling programs should play a part. The effective accomplishment of the educational and counseling goals of a college requires the provision of services that meet the special needs and abilities of adult students, the organization of services into a pattern that is compatible with the character of the college, and the administration of services in ways that are mutually supportive. (A bibliography is included.) (MB)