Summer Training - Is it really required?

It is summer time when people doing MBA are forced to do a 2 months summer internship job at some company. I am pursuing my summers at Ashok Leyland in the beautiful city of Chennai.
Some of the experience I have had with the company:

• The company HR started working on our projects only after we joined the office. No prior thought was given with regards to the project to be allocated.
• The HR just escorted me to some person in the sourcing department and then left everything about my training to the poor guy. He had to talk to his boss and after giving a thought for 2 days, he finally made up a project and assigned me a project called 'Costing of electrical wiring harness'. He then introduced me to some other guy in the department and asked him to explain me the project details. He tried explaining it to me but then he just gave me some excel files and said that I could myself do the project. So, on a whole, I have not been adequately briefed about my project and I have to find a way myself to do costing and fit the collected data in the excel sheet.
• Now I report to no one. The junior guy expects me to report the senior and the senior guy expects me to report to the junior.
• And so on....

I guess this occurs in almost all big companies where the summer internship is just meant for enhancing the company brand value and its ties with B Schools. (No motive of knowledge transfer)
And this attitude of companies is completely justified. I mean why should a big company incur so much cost and invest so much time on a summer intern who is just going to leave the company in 2 months time. Why waste time of an employee who could actually utilize the time for company affairs instead of training the 2 month summer trainee?
Some people believe that summer training projects should be really very thorough and should be live projects. Why should a company go through the pain of creating such projects, explaining it to the trainees and then paying them for work? And why should confidential information be provided to MBA students who will be out in 2 months ready to spill all the data out to the world? Also why should company give them tough and critical projects? I mean how can the company trust on the trainee's ability to solve problems which are critical to the company.
Also, the project may or may not appeal to the trainee.

Due to the above mentioned problems, summer trainees are given some simple jargonised projects which appear to be complex to keep them interested. A lot of jargons like Analysis, Feasibility, Modelling, Strategy, etc are used in the project titles. These projects aren't very critical from the point of view of the organizaiton and most of the projects aren't even read by the mentors. The project reports lie in the HR's cabin and serve no purpose. Summer training becomes just a PR activity nothing else.

This brings me to the point that if neither the company nor a trainee (no value addition) is to gain anything by the exercise of summer training, why should this exercise be made compulsory in a B School? It may actually prove to be counter productive - the company has to assign an employee to the trainee, which it could have utilized for a productive purpose, and the student could have learnt more over the internet and the library.
Some may argue that in a summer training, students are exposed to the corporate culture for the first time in their lives and this may prove to be beneficial when they join their final job. Now this arguement has some merit. But when we look at the demographic profile of the students at a B School, more than 50% students already have worked at some place. So, they have been exposed to the corporate culture and stuff like that.
So, for atleast these 50 % students, I feel that summer training is a redundant exercise. A lot of time is wasted and not much is gained. Why should 200 marks be assigned to such a futile exercise. Instead of the training where a trainee has to wait for the mentors attention, wait for data, wait for internet, etc. a student can read a lot and learn many many useful things in his field of interest in the 2 months.

Consider my case: I have been in the corporate office and have been assigned a very insignificant project which has almost no use. (Verify the cost of the material provided by a vendor). I have not much to learn from this project and at the same time, the company has nothing to gain from the project. It can be done by an experienced person in 2-3 days only. It is better I do not do this project and read.

Hence, I conclude that for a person with a prior work experience, the summer training should be optional and not compulsory.