Are you sure the essays are set for that reason? I had to write essays and reports a lot in my CS course but the reason was pretty clearly because the professors didn't want to do code reviews. They certainly didn't care about clarity of writing given the absolutely minimal feedback provided on those reports, the general uselessness of what little was provided and the fact that by the time you reach a university you've already sat through many years of educators teaching you how to write (or trying), so CS profs have no edge there.
What taught me to write wasn't school or essay writing homework, not even at university level. The crucible that forged my own ability to spell and argue was the internet. Slashdot, blogging, later HN.
If I was a teacher trying to teach people to write, I'd be tempted to pick some reddit forums, and ask students to find a comment they thought they could add to, then submit (to me) a set of replies to them. Online forums give you real time feedback in whether your argument landed or not, whether people understood what you meant and so on. Literally every mini-essay is graded by other readers, in real time, on demand (maybe not on writing quality but it never is, not even in school).
What taught me to write wasn't school or essay writing homework, not even at university level. The crucible that forged my own ability to spell and argue was the internet. Slashdot, blogging, later HN.
If I was a teacher trying to teach people to write, I'd be tempted to pick some reddit forums, and ask students to find a comment they thought they could add to, then submit (to me) a set of replies to them. Online forums give you real time feedback in whether your argument landed or not, whether people understood what you meant and so on. Literally every mini-essay is graded by other readers, in real time, on demand (maybe not on writing quality but it never is, not even in school).