The American university is currently undergoing a period of often-uncomfortable public scrutiny. Rising tuition costs and attendant higher student loan debt loads have caused both considerable human hardship and considerable criticism of individual institutions and the college education system as a whole. This report presents the following: (1) a discussion of the current political pressure to assess college learning; (2) a discussion of some of the basic requirements for an effective collegiate learning assessment system; (3) a brief look at extant tests to assess student learning on campus; (4) challenges to the validity and reliability of these instruments; and (5) a proposal for locally-controlled disciplinary assessments that could interface with standardized assessments of critical thinking skills, giving a more full picture of student learning and including faculty in the assessment process in doing so.