I suspect the VR pilots get more out of it than any of the students - or rather, the interested passengers
I think you're way out of touch and out of line with this statement.
A lot of my guys would - in many ways - much rather come in and fly air cadets, where there is much less pressure and much less requirement to get everything right, rather than spend time preparing for their instructional sortie, briefing carefully and then instructing to the best of their ability (which in many cases is considerable), then debriefing and conscientiously writing up the sortie.
I also have to say that the students who follow the formal syllabus are definitely not "interested passengers"! They still need to meet the same standards for first solo, solo sector recce, solo aeros etc. Just because the system has changed doesn't mean that those individual standards requirements have been allowed to lapse. And they never will be!