There was a similar discussion to this one
a couple months ago. Here are a few excerpts from a post I made in that thread.
"In high school, if you really like athletics, you can play football, baseball or such. If you like music you can be in marching or concert band. If you like english you can be in journalism. What is there for the kids who like math and science? Really, there are only so many quiz bowl competitions a kid can handle. So, there's FIRST: an extra curricular activity for cultivating math and science...
I got something totally different from my FIRST experience. To me the spirit of FIRST is all about sharing. During the 6 week build period, you share yourself with the 5, 10, 20, or 50 other people on your team. At the competition, you share your creation with everyone who watches your 'bot play the game. And the whole while we're involved in this concept of sharing called gracious professionalism. So, I took that to heart and decided to share knowlege for a living. I'm in school now to be a high school math teacher."
I didn't have to worry much about scholorships here in Florida (severe teacher shortage + pretty good high school record = George gets to go to school really cheap), but I think it would be good for FIRST if students with other intrests had scholorship opportunities, too. However, we're probably not going to see it anytime soon.
Creating more engineers is what attracts sponsors to FIRST. Creating more journalists, politicians, dentists, veterinarians, cowboys / firetrucks (
), and teachers isn't.