I'm going to put in my 2c here. Actually, it's more like $7.50.
When I first heard of FIRST, I had been out of college and in the so-called "real world" for a year. So even if there was a College FIRST, it wasn't an option for me. Sure, FIRST existed when I was in high school (1993-1996), but it was so small back then and largely in New Hampshire, so being a high school student on Long Island, I had little chance of hearing about it. If I had, I certainly would have participated, although my parents likely would have protested the long, late nights during the build season.
I was interested in getting involved as a mentor, but I didn't end up finding a way to do so until a year later, when I broke my leg skiing. The person who was driving me to and from work every day explained that his son was on a rookie team. I mentioned that I was interested, and asked if they needed more engineers to help. When he said "yes," I jumped -- as much as I could do so with a broken leg
-- at the chance to join up. I remember ambling into my very first FIRST team meeting on crutches, hearing about what we had to do in six weeks, and thinking "my ($deity), these kids will never do that!" But they did! And so it goes, every year. I look forward to it every year, and at work I always make sure to publicize why I'm not at work for certain Thursdays and Fridays in March and April -- and to try to infect as many people as I can in my life with the FIRST bug.
Mentoring has been a great experience for me, and though I've had to change teams twice due to moving, I've always stuck with it. FIRST has been, unequivocally, the single most rewarding activity I have EVER had the pleasure of being a part of.
I'm a software guy. I've had my hands dirty in robot code several times. Heck, I've even spent some time on a drill press, but not as much. I love letting the students figure out how to do things, but there are times when I'd like to get involved with actually building the robot instead of just tightening a screw or two or writing a few lines of code here and there! I'd also love to learn the mechanical stuff so I don't feel like an idiot when I get near the robot chassis.
This year was frustrating (in a GOOD way!) for me in that we had a really awesome student writing our code... He inherently knew how to do EVERYthing. I think I wrote ONE switch/case statement block this year and that was it.
I love mentoring. I love going down to regionals and to Atlanta with my team. I love helping out other teams when I can. I don't love babysitting the few students on teams who will invariably not respect authority and do various things that are not very GP-ish. However, that is but a small fraction of the "job" of being a FIRST mentor, and is far outweighed by everything else I get from the program.
Would it be nice to have a college-level and/or adult-level FIRST-like competition? Sure. I'd join up in an instant, mainly because I didn't have the opportunity when I was in high school, and the kids have so much fun (while preparing for work and life) doing it. But if there were a college- or adult-level FIRST-like competiton, we might have fewer mentors for the high school FIRST teams. And quite frankly, I do not have nearly as much time as I would like to spend on FIRST as it is!
An adult-level competition is something I often dream about, but I understand that such is not my place in FIRST.