Abstract

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".