An idea whose time has come: chess scholarships:
Texas Tech joins a small group of institutions that have decided that good chess players are likely to succeed academically, and that offering chess scholarships can elevate a college’s reputation. The University of Connecticut’s engineering school, hoping to lure applicants away from the country’s top engineering programs, also began offering chess scholarships this year.
Other institutions with such programs include the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the University of Texas at Dallas, each part of its state’s public university system. According to Jim Stallings, director of the Texas program and also chairman of the college committee of the United States Chess Federation, the governing body for chess in this country, there are “10 or so” such programs nationwide.