Robert Morris University in Chicago is now offering a full scholarship, worth $50K, if you make the cut on their League of Legends team. League of Legends is arguably one of the most popular multiplayer online games on the planet.

In October, the League of Legends world championships drew 32 million viewers online. An additional 18,000 fans packed the Staples Center in Los Angeles to watch two teams of five skinny young men click away on their mice—as the game played out on huge screens overhead. When a player died, fans screamed as loudly as if Kobe Bryant had just launched himself from the free-throw line and thrown down a two-handed dunk.

This is no accident. Online gaming is becoming an industry, most recently evidenced by Amazon’s purchase of Twitch for about US$970 million.

While it might seem frivolous for an institution of higher learning to offer a video game scholarship, their job is to prepare kids for the real world. And if the real world rewards a particular skill set, colleges should help give interested students a leg up to that particular ledge.

The reward for Robert Morris is obvious. They are getting attention in the press, certainly, but they are making themselves into a destination school, reshaping themselves to meet a need and to be an integral part of the future of higher ed.