[happyflower]

Students can make very big and positive contributions to Open Source and contributing to Open Source with a primary goal of benefiting the project is great. But if this is just a secondary goal, then I would politely say "no" to the offer.

If, however, the university would provide resources to ensure that contributions have the required quality and can assist maintainers with the added load, then it would possibly work! I could imagine that a direct link between maintainer(s) and university supervisor/lecturer would work well, so that maintainers can express their needs and priorities to someone who can handle/govern them in front of the learners.