I think young adults are really into their mobile devices so, mobile development could be another fun way to go.

I personally got a good leg up on becoming a web developer through codeschool.com. Their videos are top-notch and their sandbox exercises are pretty helpful. There's a bit of a leap to actually setting up your computer to actually develop but they've added some videos to help with that as well.

If he can be a self-motivated learner then I'd recommend doing something like that, along with edx, udacity, and coursera on the more academic side, or udemy and pluralsight on the more technical/professional side.