Accountability is a concept that is well suited to the marketplace and a market-driven society, and it is appropriate when one wants to acquire a product made or sold by someone else. This commodification model is less effective when people pay for a service, rather than a product. The model becomes even more problematic when it is applied to experiences in which people cannot so easily separate the "provider" from the one having the experience. The attempt to commodify all "goods" as finished products gets in the way of a commonsense application of the principles of accountability to education. In talking about education, it is necessary to abandon the language of the marketplace. Students are not consumers, colleges are not delivery systems, and education is not a commodity. In this article, the author talks about a new demand for accountability which appears to be centered on what is good for the student but ignores what students look for when they select a college: a specific learning community, with its distinctive ways of helping students go about learning. For students entering a school that is committed to helping them meet the qualifications for entry into a particular trade or profession, the measurement of performance against industry standards is reasonable and may be very helpful. For students seeking a liberal education, such testing is not only unhelpful but restrictive of the very freedom that is essential to that education. Here, the author provides three personal examples, one from his undergraduate days and another two from his law-school and bar-exam experiences.