I suspect some of this is "good college" syndrome: there are plenty of colleges that would accept someone with the scores this kid has, regardless of a few Cs on his transcript. From my admittedly cursory reading of this article, it sounds like they didn't apply to those colleges. Those schools that would want him are usually not the big and relatively cheap state schools, but are instead the far more expensive private colleges. I think that's probably the trade off: do less work and pay more money for college. Get straight As and high test scores and go for free or at least a lot closer to it.
Just another idea...
