Well that’s pretty much how Spanish works. We have estudiante but that normally ends with -e so we’ll use alumno as an example:

El alumno - single masculine

La alumna - single feminine

Los alumnos - multiple masculine or mixed group. As long as there’s at least one guy its masculine

Las alumnas - multiple feminine

So saying something like Les alumnes (seems like French lol) can sound more neutral than Los alumnos despite not being officially correct because los has an implied masculine connotation