To assess the relative importance of selected educational needs for adult students in New York's two-year colleges, samples of faculty/staff, younger (17-24) traditional college students, and older (25+ years) re-entry adult students were administered the Survey of Student Needs, a 75-item questionnaire tapping the following five facets of the collegiate experience: academic survival skills, personal development, instructional patterns, curricular services, and support services. Chi-square analyses indicated several major trends. High priority items for re-entry adults included evening and weekend classes and registration, life-experience credit, and vocabulary and math skill improvement. Both younger and older students exhibited a strong preference for memory, concentration, and study skill improvement; for relaxed, informal, encouraging instructors who provide examples in their lectures; and for a broad educational background. Re-entry adult women expressed a significant need for remedial and support services, encouragement and reassurance, and academic survival skill improvement. Faculty/staff perceived the needs of re-entry adults as more important than the adults themselves had indicated. Data were organized into a three-level ordering of needs ranked within facets, and institutional resources were inventoried according to the identified needs of re-entry adult students. (Author)