If all my reports will just be skimmed over, why not only submit a summary and save everyone a lot of time?

I’m assuming that at some point someone will actually read over the report, and when the time comes they’re not going to want to read “my first idea is… my second idea is… my third idea is…” generally if they actually read it they’ll be able to figure that out by themselves. If they want to read material in that format they can go back to kindergarden and read some of those books.

Of course, schools always pull out the “this is how it works in the real world” excuse in a completely inconsistent and self-serving way, but sometimes it has validity.