That's fucking retarded. If NU said "yeah, we'll take your commitment, come on up" without looking at his transcripts then they are at fault. Even worse, if they looked at them and said "yeah, you're good to go academically, come on up" but made a mistake then they are really at fault. What a cluster.
Every major program has people that check into shit like this. Shouldn't even be an issue. The only way it is his fault is if he needed a certain grade and didn't get it and didn't find out until after he got here.