Urban community colleges can be distinguished from other community colleges in terms of their settings, clientele, richness and diversity of staff resources, and importance to the segments of the population who cluster in major national centers of commerce and government. In light of their unique characteristics, these institutions require study as a distinctive subset of the larger community college movement to determine their goals and objectives and success in achieving them. The two fundamental criteria for determining this success are effectiveness (i.e., performing a legitimate function for which a need exists at some acceptable level of quality) and efficiency (i.e., producing at as high a level of output as possible with as low a level of inputs or costs as possible). The main difficulty in determining the success of community colleges arises from different views of effectiveness. One view would link effectiveness to success in carrying out priorities that are similar to the priorities of those who pay the bill. Another view would maintain that effectiveness is measured by assessing the level of agreement among faculty and administrators with respect to their support for institutional priorities. Future research contrasting these views of institutional effectiveness may illuminate some of the conflicting forces with which administrators must cope as well as strategies available to reconcile them. (HB)