To quote it freely, he went along the lines of: "The first of today's two legs has a VOR approach with a step-down, so I will let the autopilot fly it and then land manually."
It honestly gave me a chill hearing this student making it sound as a VOR approach is something terrible, unbearably dangerous that he'd rather not hand-fly. Even worse was that the instructor accepted his decision.
I am curious, am I just overly sensitive here or does it seem that the big schools spitting out soon-to-be airline pilots teach too little actual hand flying and instead learn students how to control the systems instead?!?
The notion of ab-initio training into the airline cockpit has always been a bad idea, but it's alive and well around the world. The concept is that a new-hire can be trained up exactly as the company wants, setting aside the fact that there is never a substitute for experience.
There's little use for autopilot and flight director training at the initial stages, unless one is going to be spending a lot of time in aircraft that utilize them.
We do hand-flown approaches during training and on the line, as well. I prefer to hand fly to altitude and to hand fly the approach and landing, though I also try to utilize the autopilot too...one should stay proficient both ways.
Your description of the student that you overheard sounds like the training was being done to a specific airline regime, mimicking what that individual might do in a particular operation. I doubt it represents the norm in training, or the sum total capability of that particular student or program.