Roles and permissions

I've found some threads that relate to my problem, but I haven't found one that addresses it directly so here it goes.

I have a metacourse with a number of child courses, but I'd like to be able to add students to the metacourse who are not in any child course. When I try to do so as administrator I get the dreaded:

'Can not assign this role to user "Jane Doe" because Manage metacourse capability is needed.'

I'm assuming it's possible to add students as the help file states, "Participants may be added via the Student area within the Administration block in the Meta Course."

I've tried the override function. When I turn on the override for admin, it doesn't help, but when I turn it on for student, I can actually enroll the student. The problem is that the student can then indeed manage the metacourse, i.e., they can add and delete child courses.

What am I missing?

Thanks,
-Dan