Buford has taken a popular topic, that of the crisis of identity, and with no little hyperbole, found its cause within American institutions of higher education. "The student in the contemporary college is in a crisis of monumental proportions, it is a crisis of self-knowledge". From this rather sweeping generalization, Buford moves to his thesis: "My claim is that the American college in the late twentieth century has abandoned its mission to educate students to find and prepare for what they (...) are to do and be". (shrink)