Posted on 09/06/2014 6:59:27 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Sean Bensema stayed up late one recent evening practicing and woke up unusually early the next morning to prepare for the biggest moment of his life: a tryout for an athletic scholarship to college.
The shaggy-haired 18-year-old didn’t need to change out of the T-shirt he slept in or even leave his parents’ house to make the squad. He just set up his laptop on the dining-room table and started stunning his enemies with fire shot from the hands of his digital avatar.
Mr. Bensema is among 150 players competing for a spot on the nation’s first varsity videogame team. At stake: a scholarship that might be worth $50,000. […]
In a time of tight budgets, many colleges have been cutting back scholarships and eliminating programs in sports like swimming and gymnastics. …
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I blame it on soccer.
Better’n golf...
Video game scholarships are actually a low cost way of boosting scholarships to STEM majors, without having to add a lot of infrastructure. There are certainly enough valid complaints of engineers paying higher tuition rates per hour to subsidize football teams and the girls’ softball teams they need to meet Title 9.
And if any of these video game scholars are the next Bill Gates or founder of the next Oracle, you could get a lot in the future donations to the school for that few thousand dollars you subsidized their education.
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