Yet millions of people, from fifth graders who ought to at least be able to read Goosebumps books to elderly adults who need to read their prescriptions, still cannot read or write. In the program, some University students are able to tutor children in reading and writing and receive University credit for their efforts. But to require community service, like the University requires math or a foreign language, crosses the line from encouraging good citizenship to enforcing a certain form of extracurricular behavior. It would make an academic requirement out of a fundamentally non-academic enterprise. Community service simply does not offer learning equivalent to a course in Hebrew literature or thermodynamics.
University students ought to be judged solely on the basis of their college-level learning.
Equity is another issue. Most forms of community service, or what can be called so as long as it is not compelled volunteerism, rely fundamentally on an idea of social justice. Those of us with some advantages, the assumed premise says, have a duty to help those without the advantages. It's a middle-class conceit, although a useful one. But not all University students fit that assumption.