My handwriting has always been terrible. It was a big issue in school until I was able to turn in printed assignments.
Like with a lot of school things, they do a shit thing without thinking about negative effects. They always want a simple solution to a complex problem.
A lot of this comes from professors wanting comments in assinments and grade on arbitrary levels of if it exists.
I had one class where the instructor would give a vuage “not enough comments” that I did comments like this on every fuction and loop out of spite.