This paper focuses on the changes affecting the management, leadership, and effectiveness of community colleges. In order to create a comprehensive plan that avoids complacency and demonstrates a new vision for administering higher education, institutions must develop an entrepreneurial spirit in its mission, research the marketplace, and manage the institution with a strategic objective. The higher education paradigm must be changed to that of an entrepreneurial enterprise with a customer-driven marketing strategy. Market research provides qualitative as well as quantitative viewpoints and identifies whom the target audience is and what they want, need, and think of an institution in comparison with its competition. The paper suggests that the need for strong leadership is essential to this advancement process, and the president of each educational institution must possess skills in business, economics, marketing, finance, and human relations. Once formulated, an institution's mission should be continually reviewed, open to additional change and innovation. The paper predicts that in the future, institutions will strive to find narrower niches, subdividing themselves to better serve new, more discrete markets. Customer service and market research are integral to meeting these internal and external challenges in higher education. (YKH)