They don't want to take a beginning IFR student in actual

That's actually reasonable, in my experience. At that point, actual
would
largely be a waste of your time and money.

I've heard that argument before, and I don't agree with it, though I
can easily see why it might sound compelling.

Maneuvers are all well and good, but IMO what a beginning instrument
student needs more than anything is just time controlling the airplane
by instruments - level flight, turns to headings, climbs and descents,
tracking a VOR/ADF/GPS/whatever - the fundamentals of IFR flight.
Sure, he might need a little help on the departure or approach, but
most of the flight he can handle - and it's great training. The reason
I think many instructors are not too comfortable with doing it is
simple - the student WILL bank the plane to 60 degrees. He WILL let
the airspeed decay almost to stall. He WILL mishandle the plane. But
truly, you need to be off heading for a while before you get off
course, and a 1000 ft block altitude is usually not hard to get. As
long as the instructor is comfortable that he can recover from an
unusual attitude (induced by the student) in IMC without drama, or
better yet talk the student through the recovery, it's not a big deal.
Thing is, some instructors are not terribly comfortable with that.

If the goal is to get the student to the checkride in minimum time,
then this isn't the most efficient way to go. In fact, if that's the
goal, doing any training at night and/or in IMC is not recommended.
But if the goal is to train a student capable of using his airplane to
go places in lousy weather (down to mins) day or night, then more and
earlier exposure to IMC is best. I'm a pretty strong advocate of IMC
early and often, and have even had a low time (about 150 hours) private
pilot with no complex or high performance experience flying actual
night IMC on his second IFR lesson - the first in his Bonanza that he
just purchased that day.

Michael