Competitions have been cut because I have consolidated weekly and monthly meetings into just weekly meetings. And doing competitions weekly would have been too short a time frame.
I don't like the idea of forcing the player in a certain direction by making him upgrade a specific building, or pump up a specific stat, anyway. At least not enough to code that up.
For the stats you also have the additional problem that they are heavily rng dependent, depending on which events you happen to get. And I try to avoid stuff which encourages save scumming.
What I do plan to add in at some point is a weekly event you can make happen at those weekly meetings. Like a trip to the beach, or into the city. No idea when I'll get around to that (not in 0.2.0 at least), but it's on my to do list. And that will be another way to influence your students, and be able to have pictures in the game which otherwise would not fit.
