A study was conducted by the Center for the Study of Community Colleges to assess student knowledge in the liberal arts in four large urban community college districts (i.e., Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami-Dade, and St. Louis). The study used both a student characteristics survey and the General Academic Assessment (GAA), a content test designed to measure the knowledge of student cohorts, rather than individual students, with respect to humanities, sciences, social sciences, mathematics, and English usage. Study findings, based on GAA forms completed by 8,026 students in the 23 participating colleges, included the following: (1) student knowledge was related to both age and to the number of courses completed in particular areas; (2) the age relationships showed up in English usage, social sciences, and humanities (the older the student the higher the score on those scales), but not in mathematics or science; (3) the highest scores were achieved by students who were attending college for their personal interest, with those preparing for transfer making the second highest scores; (4) scores tended to increase for each of the subject areas to the extent that students took courses in those areas; and (5) students' own assessments of their skills showed high correlations with their GAA scores. (RO)