Currently the TCK is only meant to be run under Java EE, with the "SE mode" as means of developer convinience only. There are some tests though which cannot be tested under Java EE (see BVTCK-68), but they could be tested under Java SE. If there was a "profile" or similar which defines running and passing the TCK under Java SE, the tests removed with BVTCK-68 could come back.

Note that another angle of atack could be an improvement in Arquillian so one could assert on exceptions no matter whether they are raised at deploy or run time of a given test.