Until last year, winning a regional spelling bee was the only way that children from across the U.S. could be invited to—and win—the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, an iconic scholastic competition held since 1925. 

Then, 14-year-old Karthik Nemmani won the 2018 Bee, correctly spelling the word koinoniafor the championship. Karthik’s path to the national event was different. He was part of the Bee’s first-ever class of “invited” spellers: kids who lost at regionals but whose parents agreed to pay an entry fee of $750 and fund their family’s own travel and lodging, potentially thousands of dollars. 

This new pay-to-play option, called “RSVBee,” nearly doubled the number of young people vying for the championship to more than 500. It also changed, with one stroke, what it takes to access this high-prestige contest, adding significant money to the mix. For this year’s event, which takes place next week, Scripps has raised the fee to $1,500, getting even more takers. Now, paying contestants will outnumber those who got there the traditional way. 

For spelling bee competitors—like those in chess, geography, Scrabble, and other brain sports—it can appear worth the price. Paying for an extra chance at a scholastic honor may resonate differently after this year’s college entrance scandal than it did when Scripps initiated its program last year. But in several years of conducting research about the Bee, I’ve met many families willing to uproot their lives and relocate to less competitive regions to give their child a better chance to advance.

Scripps gives its rationale for the program as making the competition more fair and inclusive, not less. Some areas of the country lack regional sponsors to pay winners’ way to the national event, and some have more crowded regional competitions than others, so spellers face geographic inequities. “Through RSVBee we are proud to open a door that had closed, often for matters beyond the participants’ control,” said Paige Kimble, the Bee’s executive director, in an email. Asked about creating economic inequities, she added, “It’s our aim to keep the price…as low as possible” and noted that families often can get local donors to help. 

It’s not just spelling bees where youthful competition has ramped up its intensity. What kids now call a “spelling career” is analogous to their peers’ approach to chess meets, dance competitions, gourmet cooking or other passions that their predecessors cultivated somewhat later in life. Parents of this generation—Generation Z, born from 1997 to 2012—have become versed in ferrying their children to high-stakes contests of all kinds, many of them expensive to sustain.

The RSVBee program epitomizes how human capital development is permeating childhood. In previous generations, those with means poured time and money into preparing their offspring for college and the job market. Writing about Millennials, born in the 1980s and ’90s, journalist Malcolm Harris identified high school and college internships as the primary resume-builders. What is distinct about Gen Z is how early this process is beginning.

Now there is no minimum age to display talent and skill. According to sociologist Hilary Friedman, a childhood competitive culture has become ubiquitous—and useful. Gen Z pre-teens are developing marketable skills at earlier ages because they prove valuable in competitions. They have resumes, and become Instagram and YouTube stars and business entrepreneurs. “It’s like you’re the CEO of your own life, right?” 14-year-old elite speller Shreyas Parab told me the first time we met; later he founded a necktie company while in high school. Reality shows like “Top Chef,” “Dancing with the Stars” and “Project Runway” recently introduced “junior” editions that showcase children demonstrating competitive expertise that was once adult territory.

The National Spelling Bee began to be televised in 1994 and upped the stakes in 2011 with a made-for-TV stage for a live prime-time ESPN broadcast. To shine on this national platform, elite competitors start to develop spelling careers as early as age 6, hoping to achieve great things by 14, when most age out. They are not interested in trophies for participating, many have told me; they want recognition for winning. By high school, former elite spellers are becoming spelling bee coaches; tutoring firms are charging up to $200 an hour for their services. 

An extra factor driving the stakes for this generation of spellers is a concerted effort by non-U.S.-born parents, particularly Indian-Americans, to make a mark on the competition. In 1985, Balu Natarajan was the first child of immigrants to win the Scripps bee. Of the 33 contests since then, fellow Indian-Americans have won 17 more, including the last 11 straight. 

Indian-Americans, just 1% of the U.S. population, have established their own minor-league spelling bee circuit that adds opportunities to hone on-stage performance. They have led the way in paying for coaching, buying or developing proprietary study software and traveling to participate in more bees. Many spellers’ parents came to the U.S. via the Immigration Act of 1990 that admitted exceptionally skilled immigrants who specialize in STEM topics. It is no mystery that they would value education—and recognition of it—above all else; it is the very thing that gave them access to this country.

But they’re not alone. Each year that I have interviewed Bee families, I have met more who decided to hire a coach, as more felt that they could no longer prepare adequately on their own. The level of difficulty also has increased; the Bee introduced supplemental vocabulary tests in 2013 and written tie-breakers in 2017. Time management, goal setting and self-discipline have become major priorities for competitors. 

To some, this will sound antithetical to their understanding of childhood. Recent generations, as shown in the work of anthropologist Helen Schwartzman, placed more importance on children’s play and exploration, at least among white middle-class families. (Many working-class and minority families had different challenges and outlooks.) 

If the college admissions scandal has shown us anything, it is that the stakes are higher for Generation Z kids, expected to do more at a younger age. This means not only intense competition, but family support to develop the kind of human capital needed to succeed. Whether or not the 2019 National Spelling Bee once again celebrates an invited, paying speller, no one should underestimate the lengths families will go to give their spellers—or young competitors in any contest—a shot at the title.