Andre Brown sent along a quote from E.O. Wilson I like very much.

I went to the University of Alabama and they pretty much let me do what I wanted to do. I got into the Department of Biology and had some very good, attentive professors. It was the late '40s and they paid close attention to me. I was a gangly 17-year-old when I first went and graduated at 19. They were used to dealing almost entirely with preparing students to go on to medical school. Here they had an authentic embryonic biologist, so I got all sorts of special attention, including my own lab space when I was a freshman—it was great.

I'm not sure you could reproduce that experience today. Science has changed a lot. For parents thinking of encouraging their children to become scientists, and especially biologists and naturalists—if the student has that inclination to start with—I would recommend liberal arts colleges, not major research institutes. Go to a major research university after you've had four years of a liberal arts college that believes in generalized training in biology, including natural history, with heavy emphasis on ecology. In the last several years I've visited a number of really outstanding ones and the difference between them and major research universities, including my own Harvard, is striking, in terms of what it can mean to an individual student.

Most science education takes a boot camp approach or is set up to train acolytes. That's because most scientists are journeymen—they're not masters. That is to say, they're well-versed and if it's a major research university they probably have some accomplishments on a narrow segment of scientific research, but basically they think like journeymen and are there to train journeymen. They don't think particularly laterally about what their field means. There are, of course, in every university and college striking exceptions, but most scientists are recognized for and advanced by the discoveries they make. The gold and silver of science is original discovery. They know they have to be involved in making an original discovery, and to do that you move along a very narrow front.

There's time enough to specialize and dig deep into a field in graduate school. An undergraduate education should emphasize breadth of knowledge and a recognition of the big ideas, not giving a fine focus on one tight little problem.

I think his emphasis on ecology is a product of his personal biases, though. If you ask me, you should emphasize developmental and molecular biology.