Focusing on the social forces acting upon community colleges, this paper reviews possible modes of response by the colleges, focusing specifically on the role of institutional research. The first section presents an overview of the social forces affecting community colleges, discussing the 16% increase in two-year college enrollments in the 1980's; the impact of limited federal, state, and local funding; the financial stress caused by growing prison populations, health care costs, and public school costs; increasing percentages of minorities and changing family demographics; and the declining availability of full-time work. The next section discusses possible modes of response by the community colleges. Likely responses include establishing or maintaining affirmative action programs, increased use of advanced technology to provide instruction, an increased importance assigned to institutional research to enable colleges to adapt, a continued emphasis on accountability, and a decision on the part of colleges to become more elitist or retain a traditional open-admissions orientation. The last section focuses on the role of institutional research in the changing world of the community college, emphasizing the importance of colleges taking a proactive, rather than reactive, stance. With a proactive approach, institutional research will produce more than routine descriptive statistics; it provide models for long-term planning in a rapidly changing environment. A 27-item bibliography is included. (MAB)