This report summarized observations of administrators at nine colleges in the Academic Quality Consortium (AQC) who assessed the performance of their institutions using the Malcolm Baldrige criteria as a guideline. These criteria include leadership, information and analysis, strategic planning, human resource development and management, management of process quality, quality and operational results, and customer focus and satisfaction. The nine participants in the AQC project gathered and synthesized information using interviews, brainstorming, the ownership method, and "ownership-brainstorming-integration." The last was the approach by the administrators for developing an award application or full-scale assessment. Participants also gave their views on the three scoring dimensions used in the Baldrige evaluation: approach, deployment, and results. Findings revealed the existence of several challenges and concepts related to the use of the Baldrige criteria. The challenges identified by participants included integrating the assessment activities into one's normal activities, dealing with decentralization, the potential negative impact of a Baldrige award on the environment of higher education, language problems, and quality by design. The major concepts identified included an appreciation for holistic thinking, a "systems" perspective, the importance of campus control over higher education, a methodology for learning, and motivational uses of the Baldrige award. (CK)