steinberg cubase sucks the big one to use, protools is much easier to use imo. however again it is an industry tool and would be a program that is tought at uni or tafe. wel lit was a few years ago when a mate of mine was studding @ tafe, it is dear as poison,  but you can as you said get a student version and they also give you a trial version, to be honest before buying any of these he is better off ringing a tafe or uni that is doing these courses and find out which they are teaching you, as some of my info might be outdated, as it was a few years ago since one of my mates was doing this at tafe, at the time i was contemplating getting into this industry and it was cubase and prootools that they were teaching, but these things change, personally for home use ive always messed around with the sony products, which is sound forge and acid. bit cheaper and very good interfaces also pretty easy to use. but again its best to ring up the tafe and uni say he is considering doing this course and you are wanting to get the program that he would need the most. here is a free trial of cubase http://www.steinberg.net/en/products/cubase/trial_version.html
cubase could be allot better these days, 4 -5 years ago it was very 1 dimensional and you had to click allot of buttons and do allot of work to make it do simple tasks that other programs could allow you to do in one click, it was very over complicated for no reason, so it could be allot better as the company has been around for a long time, but i do know it was used allot, so its still most likely is a tool he will need to learn.
to be honest one of the reason i didnt study this was because i had to use cubase, and i hated it with a passion, unfortunately when studying these things you have to use what they want you to use not what you want too use. i should down load the trial my self and see if it's a better interface than it was. the pictures on the site make it look better than it did before,last time i used it the program was so over complicated you needed two monitors to have everything on hand with cubase. i'd be interested to see how it is now.