Programs that serve underrepresented minority students have long faced many challenges. Prior to the late 1970s, higher education institutions reserved academic program slots for underrepresented minority students because these students had limited access to opportunities that afforded them credentials that their white counterparts could more easily attain. As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in "Regents of the University of California v. Bakke" (1978), the use of quotas had to be discontinued; nevertheless, the need for academic success and retention programs for underrepresented minority students persisted. About twenty-five years later, the Court's decisions in "Gratz v. Bollinger" (2003) and "Grutter v. Bollinger" (2003), along with several state referenda that eliminated the use of race/ethnicity in admissions, hiring, and government contracts, placed even greater restrictions on programs that aim to serve underrepresented minority students. While programs that primarily serve minority students have had to adjust to the legal and political environment, the nature of program assessments has also changed. No longer should an assessment be purely quantitative, listing descriptive statistics that give broad and cursory synopses of the program's effectiveness. Qualitative assessments are critical for tapping into process issues that must be addressed to improve these programs. In this article, the author discusses the importance of qualitative assessment for programs created primarily to serve minority students in higher education, associated benefits and challenges, and procedures for conducting culturally competent program assessments.