Despite the long presence of assessment and quality assurance in US higher education, questions and concerns about higher education quality in this higher education system have been salient for the last several decades. Compliance and student learning are two frequently competing rationales for the implementation of assessment practices. This article explores assessment processes in three public universities in the United States to illustrate common challenges harmonizing these two rationales. The analysis compared institutions along four dimensions: (a) accountability, (b) educational mission, (c) assessment framework, and (d) student learning outcomes. Based on the present analysis, we argue that assessment for accreditation compliance and assessment for student learning are in fact different processes, based on the way they are implemented in US institutions. As a result, we claim that assessment for accreditation compliance is insufficient for improving higher education quality when student learning is taken into consideration. By studying the application of "tuning" in the United States, this paper also contributes to cross-national analyses and the comparative literature in higher education.