I'm not comfortable with paying for a practicum that involves doing work for a company, that also pays the school. How to handle this? My department has the undergraduates and the graduate students do a practicum. The department tries to get a corporate "sponsor," who pays the department to solve a problem, like an Operations Research problem. If the department doesn't find a sponsor, they usually do a math competition or work some other problems. 

We, the students, have to pay about $1,200 in tuition to take this course and do the work for the company. 

I don't like the idea of paying my school to do work for a company that the company also pays the school for.

I'd be fine with this if I didn't have to pay tuition or if the class was an elective.
I doubt you will have much luck convincing the faculty to change their curriculum, which is subject to institutional vetting on dimensions that even graduate students may never hear about. However, they might be sympathetic enough to your concerns (expressed politely) to grant you the chance to work on a non-corporate problem. If not, expect to grin and bear it -- and do good enough work to put the experience on your resume/CV.