It was said that discontinuing Top Skills list and introducing Signature Events was to combat un-sportsmanship behavior that some of the teams resorted to to qualify for Worlds.
In my understanding, the part of the problem was that Worlds qualification is no longer perceived just as a validation of the team’s learned engineering skills and hard work, but as a status symbol and/or an important check-mark on the college application.
Universities are free to give generous scholarships to whomever they feel appropriate. If they think, based on statistical evidence, that kids who excel in VRC and make it to Worlds would be better students and more successful graduates - that’s great.
However, once you start adding significant financial incentives to the mix, parents start projecting their own insecurities and anxieties onto the kids (see article linked in post #2) and that could lead to unhealthy competitive atmosphere. The easiest thing would be to tap into those insecurities and just sell extra field kits.
I hope RECF understands that and will keep tweaking the process to prioritize the educational goals above anything else.