Even in the real world people hardly ever ask for “10 concepts”. They ask for you to spend 40 hours to finish Round 1, that has 10 high fidelity photoshop concepts and all the required formatting, mood boards, etc. Designers are going to draw way more than just the 10 concepts, throw out bad ones, remix a few, and eventually narrow it down for the preso. But all within the allotted time/budget.
So…in the real world example above, you were asked for 10 concepts, as outlined in the Round 1 deliverables. Did I miss something?
Maybe what’s missing in this conversation is that the job of academia is to teach students how to think about and solve product problems, and that fancy renderings are but one tool in the toolkit. The thought process, however it is capped in the end (fancy renderings, models, a meeting, diagrams and workflows, whiteboard notes, whatever), needs to be fed with process work that shows the reasoning and proof.
As to overdelivering or pushing themselves beyond the limit, students are free to do that, but it’s going to cost them when they find themselves sick from stress, exhaustion, bad diet, and lack of sleep.