National studies indicate that remedial or developmental programs in the community college have generally been unsuccessful, resulting in inordinately high attrition rates among nontraditional, low-achieving students. A more appropriate system is individual, learner-oriented instruction. The attempt is to shift the students' orientation from external (chance or other powerful individuals determine events) to internal (there is a direct relationship between an individual's behavior and its outcome). The keys to the success of individualized instruction are: (1) systematic design of the total learning environment, (2) provision for multiple levels of entry into carefully ordered instructional sequences, (3) staff involvement personally and professionally, and (4) openness to approaching specific problems (grades, dropouts) on a generalized, fundamental level (locus of control). A study is being made involving a sample of 1,200 students attending several community colleges. The basic research design examines the main effects of (1) instruction, either self-paced or traditional, and (2) counseling, either composite or traditional. Data for the first two years of the project indicate that individualized instruction does produce a shift toward internal locus of control in students, if a period of at least one semester is involved. (NHM)