[Ryan Foley]

I think D.J. Fluck's spotlighted post sums this up well

"I don't understand why it should matter if your robot is 100% student built, 100% engineer built or somewhere in between. As long as you are Inspired (I word again) FIRST is getting its point and primary goal across."

I agree with this almost fully. If 100% student built gets the kids inspired, go with that, if 100% engineer built works well, do it. However, personal experiences lead me to prefer a mix of students and engineers.

My freshman year, the bot was completely built by the engineers. I personally didnt find this inspiring or fun, perhaps if they had let us watch what they were doing and they explained what was going on and why, it would have been a more positiv experience. Then, in 2004, it was 100% students. I thought it was the best set up, and that we were better than the other teams because we didnt need engineers.

Now, after taking a year off and watching, I wish that I had the oppurtunity to work with engineers in FIRST. I think that having the chance to work alongside engineers is an incredible oppurtunity that high school (and even college students) can learn a lot from. And I agree with Elise, the mentors can learn from the students. Remember Dave Lavery's story of Colin Angle and Tooth the robot at JPL/ NASA?

Also, to answer the title question of the thread, sometimes teams just can't get technical mentors to join them. Sometimes the more rural teams have no companies close enough to them that could provide engineering support. Or maybe the team is surrounded by companies, but none have the time or enough people to spare to devote to the robotics team. So it's not that all teams are voluntarily choosing not to have engineering assistance.