Field research on expectations and goals of community college social science students, faculty, and administration was done to assess the strain a public community college undergoes in attempting both "second chance" education and "cooling out" at the same time. The participant-observation method was employed. Goals identified by students were obtaining high grades so that they could transfer to senior colleges, while receiving basic remediation in regular subject classes and being given full credit for such work. The majority of faculty wanted to grade students relative to national norms, thereby holding up college standards. Most faculty members had previously been employed at senior colleges and did not want to be associated with an institution that had low academic standards, and to that end, they opposed remediation within subject classes and supported separate remediation classes with no credit allowed. The administration's position further articulated the goal dissonance; they did not want grades to be too high, although they were willing to set up remediation courses to keep students. The conflict between "cooling out" (asking low performance students to drop a course) and trying to retain students to justify the college's existence was seen to be acute. (TR)