It is a commonly held belief that student educational achievement is enhanced when students have goals. But individual goals may vary in terms of difficulty, as well as in terms of their importance and the commitment students make to achieve them. In this study, goal complexity was viewed as the influence of commitment, difficulty, and importance in explaining variation for several goals and subsequent performance for two groups of first-time community college students: Composition I students and freshman Basic English Skills students. Regression analyses were performed on ratings of a number of different goals and their corresponding task performances to see if the set of three variables could explain each goal and its related performance. The goals considered were whether a student planned to stay at the community college, grade point average for the fall of 2001, ultimate educational aspiration, occupational desire, and others. Of 950 registered students who received questionnaires, 114 composition students and 74 skills students returned initial and follow-up questionnaires. Twenty-two percent of Composition and 45 percent of Skills students listed attainment of a B.A. degree as their educational goal. The author concluded that students who have a goal may achieve greater success at a community college, but more effort is needed to combine the results of the analyses so the complex of predictor variables can better explain goals and task performance. (Author/NB)