Some variation of this was not uncommon in general. In USSR, college students were routinely used as forced agricultural labor during harvest season for up to 30 days. AFAIK something similar existed in other Soviet bloc countries.

My parents hated it, and I don't think I have ever met anyone who remembered that experience fondly for any reason. If anything, the kind of stories that people tell about it seem to imply that it was more divisive than uniting - the rural folk who were doing that as a permanent job were both resentful of "city slickers" and annoyed at the fact that they can't do it "properly", while the students would very quickly tire of being yelled at and start treating their hosts with contempt.