A survey was conducted among community college and university faculty to obtain information on writing task assignments and evaluation in classes (excluding English classes) taught during the first two years of postsecondary education. It was found that faculty in two- and four-year colleges commonly require only essay responses in tests and assignments. The cognitive demands of the tasks are generally advanced, and include evaluation and synthesis, although there is some variation between the two- and four-year institutions. Faculty state that they weigh discourse-level features such as content and organization more heavily than sentence-level features such as spelling, grammar, and mechanics; the groups are shown to differ significantly on reaction to wordiness and poor handwriting. Faculty report that they are pleased by students' progress, creativity, and humor; they are most annoyed by sentence-level features, an observation that seems to contradict their statements on criteria for evaluation. (Author/MSE)