True for college math too. I took calculus for the first time in my life in college. Half the class had it in high school, half of those students took AP calc. Exams were so brutal for those of us taking it for the first time especially. Nothing could have prepared me for them. The lecturer would schedule a two hour block outside of class and the exam was 7 very challenging questions. Most of us would not finish before the 2 hours were up. Class averages were in the 50% range. I took my C and moved on with my life never needing to do calculus by hand ever again.
My son did "Business Calculus" at a large state university. I have a masters in science and had taken many quite difficult math courses in my day. I looked at what he was asked to do and saw his exam papers. Needless to say "Business Calculus" had little to do with business and a lot to do with making math as difficult as possible. The class average was a C and I believe many of the students had taken AP calculus in high school. It was one of the courses whose purpose was not to teach but to prop up the university-industrial complex.
That's... totally normal calculus curriculum, and is pretty elementary, not advanced.
It's true you won't do a symbolic integration ever again, but practice learning stuff like that will serve them well when they're learning intricate tax code rules and principles of managerial finance, cash flow, rates of return etc.
I mean, now that I say all that, they'd probably be best served by just jumping into the complex business and finance math and skipping symbolic integration, once they totally understand integration conceptually. But if they don't, they're still getting good practice out of it, especially if they find it challenging. That means they are learning problem solving techniques they didn't know, and need to know.
The only way you're right and it's a waste of time is if they find it easy.
