For me it depends, if you are all buying players, yes I agree you don't need scouting, unless you are in a situation you really need a player and the market is too expensive. Otherwise, if you are on the lower leagues, AND would like to keep your team very cheap on the long term, then I would definitely use scouting with the other features that allow you to keep low salaries (and be picky on getting "stupid" players, aka low cleverness players).

End result is to balance the price of maintaining a cheap team against a the cost of maintaining an academy+office