Quote:
Originally Posted by maltz1881
It holds the promise of making FRC more accessible, thereby moving us closer to the day when every high school student has an opportunity to participate. Team members should be able to play more and play closer to home, all at a lower cost.
|
I hope FIRST's goal is not a FRC team in every school in the country. The way they have worded this, it could mean a team at every school, or a team within daily driving distance of every high school student.
I can't really find a way to say this nicely. That would truly suck. FRC would have lost everything that makes it special.
What will the costs be to the current teams to make this "goal" a reality? The economy can barely support the FRC teams we have. Many teams do not have engineers or other technical mentors. I don't think it matters how cheap we can make the events.
No matter how cheap they are, the above will still be a problem. There's so much more you need to be able to run a successful FIRST team than the money for an entry fee alone. FIRST could give every school in the country money to pay the entry fee, plus $500 to make their robot, and 90% of the teams would be completely unsustainable, even if they somehow managed to actually build a robot.
It seems clear as day to me that FRC is a terrible model for this kind of expansion, whereas things like FTC and VEX are perfect for it. Maybe I don't "get it". I don't get why we want a FRC team in every school. I don't get why we want to take something special and make it common and ordinary. I don't get why we want to have more more more (with more teams dropping out every year, consequently), instead of having more quality amongst the teams we've already got.
-$0.02