Recently the Alabama and LSU football programs made the news for recruiting eighth and ninth grade football players, committing to them three and four years before they will graduate from high school.
It is hard to believe these commitments will play out like they have started, because a lot can (and usually does) happen to a student during a high school, and neither party is really committed to anything until that student can actually sign a letter of intent in early February of their senior year.
It does bring up some interesting thoughts, though. What if the student athlete gets injured in high school and then cannot play in college. Texas A&M followed through on a verbal commitment to offer an athlete a scholarship this year even though the athlete (who had committed during his junior year of high school) would be unable to play college football. Head Coach Kevin Sumlin at A&M summarized the situation simply by saying the student had committed to A&M, so A&M was committed to the student.
Corporations making commitments to hire students right out of high school.
More interesting these days is corporations who are making commitments to hire students right out of high school. This is certainly not happening a lot, but when you think of the major corporations that were started or are led by executives that never finished college, it really seems a little odd that more companies don’t start looking into recruiting high school students into their workforce.
There is an article today in ERE,net by Dr. John Sullivan that talks more about this topic, and about how especially high tech companies should be considering looking to high schools to find the best and the brightest talent, and to bring it on board before their competition does.