They don’t know Robin Parry do they? I’d suggest that you have them read TEU.
There are several scholars who are or were Christian Universalists, though Christian Universalism has been by far the minority throughout church history except possibly for the first 300 years. And btw, I’m curious, does your friend base his belief system on what is the most popular belief, or what is traditional? And I’m curious what his qualifications for one being a scholar are? A PHD or is an MDIV or MA ok? What about someone who’s devoted his life to studying scripture and seeking God though he’s never been to seminary? Questions like that and the appeal to tradition irritate me. It’s usually given by those who see the scriptural evidence in support of UR but refuse to see.
I would be a “real” “Bible Scholar” in a hot second if seminaries that respected the scriptures as much as I do would allow me to get a doctorate without requiring me to sign a statement affirming I will support some kind of non-universalism on pain of dismissal. 
I don’t begrudge them for taking a doctrinal stand on their standards, but it does tend to lead to a cart-before-the-horse situation: “real” Bible scholars are often accredited by places that would refuse to pass them at all if the scholars argued for universal salvation regardless of how logically valid and accurate to a sufficiently large amount of data those scholars might be.