How should one think about assessment in general education--or what is sometimes called liberal education--in the pluralistic environment of American higher education? Generalizations about longitudinal collegiate assessment are difficult, not least because of the remarkable range of four-year institutions and the students who attend them. Nevertheless, this author firmly believes that there is need to try to assess the effectiveness of liberal education. In this article, he discusses the importance of creating the norms and benchmarks that will not only help institutions to help themselves improve learning but also enable higher education to move ahead nationally to improve the quality of undergraduate education, and to reconceive their goals.