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!?!
This has got to be the worst idea involving FIRST that I have ever seen.
My team depended heavily upon an engineering student (if you want to be technical), an electrical/software engineer, a materials engineer, the president of a large corporation who is skilled at machining and such, and two large machine shops. except they did nothing but lead us. the students had the final say on everything, unless we had no idea what we were doing, in which case we learned for next year.
Personally, I learned all about wiring the robot, and how to do that much better than we had done last year. Made inspections much easier, as well as repairs/additions. Wouldn't have done that without my electrical engineer helping. Other students learned different techniques from the other engineers helping us (I wasn't involved in those areas, so I can say personally what they learned). Next year, my team hopes we can learn even more stuff.
Bottom line is that engineers make up a huge part of the team. I came into FIRST with no idea of how to build a robot. Enigneers taught me, that's the only way I learned. Without them, team 810 wouldn't exist, as well as many other teams, I'm sure.
This seems to be a limiting factor, like the $3500 spending limit from this year's game. Except this one will ultimately kill FIRST, if anything. Yes, there are some things that should be done to level the playing field. This is simply not one of them.
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