A:
The surface would be a great laptop replacement for your student. It comes with Office, so writing papers, spreadsheets, etc will be covered and you won't have to purchase additional software as you would with the laptop.
The surface is plenty fast enough for what your student will be doing and is much more compact and lighter. I do recommend buying a keyboard for it though.
I wouldn't worry about space because using skydrive makes up for only having 32gb.
The only thing I would consider is that programs you want to install cannot be installed on the surface as you could install on a laptop. You must use the app store.
Hope this helps!