Just read Developing better developers it sounds like a great idea. I think a similar idea could also be bootstrapped outside of universities. Something that combines an open-source project with a meetup group. Senior devs can teach and work with the junior devs for the benefit of the project.
I was involved with starting something like this with the Pivot Libre project. A friend who was very into politics and had been an alderman in the past had an idea to create an open-source project for ranked pair elections. It was good. We had a bunch of people, some technical, many not. We all got together and even though I left the project because I didn't have the time to commit, it's still going. It sounds like it's even been used in a few smaller elections.