[patrickrd]

I have given this quite a bit of thought over the last couple of years, and it's my opinion that a college-level FIRST competion would be great.

The only concern I had -- as you expressed -- would be that it might retract college mentors from high school FIRST teams.

However, I think this concern is quite easily addressed by holding the college level competition during a different time of the year, for example in the fall semester.

Now, I do not think it is necessary to have FIRST sponsor this competition. It's great to have a central body like FIRST do it, but FIRST is geared towards inspiring youth to pursue science & technology. A college level competition would basically inspire college students to keep at what they are already doing. This is a good thing, but I'm not sure it's what FIRST and Dean Kamen have in mind.

I actually think College sponsored High School FIRST teams are problematic by nature, except in rare circumstances. I think a college-level competition would help let the college students have their fun and use their brains during their competition; and during the high school FIRST competition, act as mentors and not try to finish off that winning design they never could quite obtain on their high school team.

EDIT: If there were a new competition, please name it something other than FIRST. That name has given me so many headaches and taken away so many hours of my life explaining that it is an acronym and we are not the first robotics team to exist.

- Patrick