Tables are, in my opinion, a good way to learn web layout quickly, but I strongly believe that there is value in XHTML which reveals the document's semantics, and tables should be used for tabular data only. While the semantic web is in its infancy, we should try to do our best to create documents which give the future's data miners the best chance of creating linked data from our articles, essays, and appilications.

Furthermore, for developing big sites, CSS saves a lot of money and man-hours because sitewide design decisions can be made by editing a single stylesheet.

And, if he's going to do web dev in the future, and presumably add this project to his resume, his potential employers are not going to be excited to see that he thinks TD's and TR's are the way to go - most professional web dev shops use CSS/DIV based layouts.

Plus, CSS as a language, along with its support in major web browsers, is steadily improving. Old school table layouts, not so much.