Homework question: snappy titles, "hooks." What's this about?

I’ve seen many a youngster come on here and ask for help thinking up snappy titles and clever hooks for their college essays. This has made me wonder about the requirements they were given.

When I was an undergraduate (decades ago), essays were supposed to begin like scholarly discussions of a topic, with a thesis statement that stated the main case, which would then be supported by arguments. The title was supposed to be aptly descriptive of the content, neither too broad nor too narrow.

Now in my dramatic lit. class I have an assignment to write an essay that includes these requirements: “This is a full essay and should contain a snappy title, an introductory paragraph that contains a hook . . . ”

I don’t need any help writing my essay. What I want to know is this: when and why did attention-grabbing magazine articles become the model for student essays? What happened to a dignified academic approach to student material? Why in the world should a student of content in a course have to master the arts of the journalistic grabber and the news headline in order to exercise discursive and analytic skills in essay form?

In other words, this is a question about educational models and trends and not about how to write an essay. I’m hoping there’s a teacher or instructor here, perhaps one with a long memory, who can enlighten me on this puzzling change.