No there isn't a way.
The code depends on the naming convention to keep track of which field is filled out. Using the naming convention you recommend you wouldn't be able to get checkboxes to work since unchecked boxes would not be in the array and your form would have arrays of varrying length. This would prevent you from matching the array value to the correct corresponding value.
Also your technique would prevent users from having a multiselect list or checkbox group in thier form... It actaully requires naming like:
student_0[], student_1[], student_2[]... since the form fields themselves can be arrays already.
You might be able to hand edit the code to work in your case, but I would contend you would be limiting yourself by using the structure you propose, and though in simple forms it may work out for you things like checkboxes, checkbox groups, and multiselect lists really aren't covered in your proposed syntax.