[KenWittlief]

It just occurred to me, another way to look at this:

1. students do not get to do any designing. This would be equal to FIRST providing specific plans for a robot, and every team must build the same exact robot. No variations allowed (no designing). There would be lots of machining and wiring and assembling and painting involved, but the end result would be akin to the IROC racing, or design-class sailing events: everyone has the same machine, and it all comes down to how well you assemble and drive it.

2. Students do not do any "building". This would be equal to FIRST providing a versatile kits of parts that contains everything you need, no other parts or fabrication allowed. The team could design the parts into any type of robot they like. The result would be like Lego League on a bigger scale.

This analogy is not perfect, but I can see that some people would prefer one over the other.