[Monochron]

Originally Posted by NLake

I feel, however, that the mentorship aspect, of taking younger teams under your wing and aiding them, would for the most part remain intact, even if a rookie team's attendance at meets was monetarily guaranteed. In fact, I feel like eliminating the constantly looming specter of an empty treasury would help many teams to do better in competition.

I think part of the problem with this is one of scale. I would wager that most teams are in the same "worried about their treasury" boat as you are and asking them to split their efforts is difficult (though I think it is something that teams should make an effort to do). Some sort of buddy system where older teams get assigned a younger team to help would be beneficial but even then, how do you ensure that the older team is effectively helping the younger? You can't. In my years with FIRST I have been the recipient of both great help and useless help. A system of formal help would be nice, but even then it couldn't be any better than hit and miss.

Also remember that "good"/"successful" teams are often occupied year round with keeping their program strong. They would likely have even less free time to help than others would.

Have there ever been studies on the survival rates for teams going into their second (and third, and fourth, and seventh) years?

I believe somewhere around half of the rookies each year do not return for a second. I'm trying to fact check that though, take it with a grain of salt.