At the portfolio website: Lack of style, organization and hierarchy. Links leading to pages that do not seem to exist. I know it's a work in progress. And I know they teach you simplicity in design class. But that is just too simple. I say, tell him to finish his own portfolio before even offering his services.
About the example: It's like the others said, there is nothing impressive about it. And I don't see the point in leaving all that blank space in the content area. What is he going to add in there? Also, he needs to work with his HTML. He defines presentational 'attributes' (or properties? - forgot the right word) of elements in the code, when it should be done in the CSS stylesheet. I'll just say, there is unnecessary code in there. Is he using something like Dreamweaver, by any chance?
Either way, good luck.