I would not consider "inflicting" this on an open source project, unless I had discussed it with the maintainers in advance. Some of my colleagues do something

I would not consider "inflicting" this on an open source project, unless I had discussed it with the maintainers in advance. Some of my colleagues do something similar to this, where the students work on an open source project which is maintained by academics. They do get some amazing patches which add significant new features, but there are also some students who need help. It's a valuable learning experience for the students (which it should be, they are at University!), and at the end they are much more ready to usefully contribute to open source projects. However, I wouldn't feel it was fair to impose that on another open source project, as almost all projects are "reviewer time poor".