Charlie was right: college today is too often a scam

Students from Loyola of New Orleans prove his point

This article was republished with permission.

Charlie Kirk believed that many students who attend traditional four year liberal arts colleges and universities are being scammed. He reasoned that the resulting degrees in “gender studies“ or variants of ethnic oppression are real-world worthless. He further recognized that hundreds of thousands of dollars of college debt is not a ticket to success. It is only a decades-long sentence into financial slavery.

Yet, Charlie’s indictment of “higher” education may not have exposed how low universities go to create the illusion of an education. Today, their “public relations facade,” a polite term for “propaganda,” obfuscates one of the most unsavory of their deeds. The technique was spoofed in a 1964 “Rat Pack” movie starring, among others, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Rat Pack guest Bing Crosby. It was called “Robin and the 7 Hoods.”

The plot was set in Depression Era Chicago where a group of gangsters ran a “soup kitchen” to feed the poor. The crooks received praise from the community, media and the voters resulting in protection from official scrutiny. So the charity thrived as a front for an illegal gambling hall and a printing press, the latter manufacturing counterfeit money. Both were placed in the back of that soup kitchen. Perhaps Governor Tim Walz studied this movie when he was confronted with whistleblower allegations about Somali corruption in Minnesota’s modern-day soup kitchens run by his political cronies.

Loyola University of New Orleans also copies this deception. It is marginally religious, claiming to promote critical thinking in an effort to discover better ways to help what it calls “ the community at large.” Behind its “soup kitchen”facade it charges exorbitant tuition as a way to finance high salaries for administrators, professors and staff. The facade is presented as a place that cherishes the freedom to think creatively. Its stated purpose is to grant a “diploma,” which is really a fake ticket that, through racial preferences and discrimination, promises even the most incapable student entry into America’s elite. It vows fealty to diversity, equity and what they say is “inclusion.” These are its “articles of faith.“

Only after paying around $70,000 per year for room and board plus some added pocket change for weekend hamburgers and only after their first student loan installment comes “due do” (pun intended) students realize they’ve been scammed. It is then that they are offered the average annual starting salary for a holder of a liberal arts degree, around $35,000 to $45,O00 if they can find a job which reaches that average. It is a problem because the students are trained not to change the world, but, judged by their actions, become human snowflakes constantly in fear of melting from the mental friction that comes with considering differing opinions.

Take the case of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) whose students tried to be welcomed and included on the Loyola campus. It is an organization dedicated to Loyola’s principles of “ freedom, love and [especially] faith.” Founder Charlie Kirk gave his life to further creative thinking “for the benefit of the larger community.” Yet, in spite of Charlie’s bravery, creativity and martyrdom, in spite of his perhaps a Quixotic quest to return America to God, this Jesuit institution’s student government has now twice rejected applications to form a campus chapter.

In other words, like the gambling and counterfitting in the back room of the Rat Pack’s soup kitchen and unlike the “ghost”meals promised the poor by the associates of “Tampon Tim,” Loyola of New Orleans is not interested in delivering what it promises. Like the Rat Pack and Governor Walz, its platitudes form an illusion protecting an unspoken agenda.

Loyola student government’s main objection to TPUSA was that it will make other students “feel uncomfortable.” Moreover, it will bring “negativity and… disruption to the university.” In other words, the University, contrary to its published goals, in practice, teaches its students not to creatively think at all. Its students are fearful that challenging debate would be “uncomfortable.”

Initially, one might think that Loyola University of New Orleans does challenge its students as advertised. It has a school- sanctioned student organization deceptively labeled “The Abolitionist Book Club.” The club calls for “dismantling of all institutions that perpetuate slavery.” This includes the “abolition of…prisons, the police, the military, wage labor, private property, the settler-colonial state, etc.” It describes the United States as a “bourgeois settler-colony built on genocide and slavery.

Yet, at this Catholic institution, apparently there is “no room at the inn” this Christmas season for an organization that wishes to critically and religiously debate such ideas. The school’s student body is apparently taught that TPUSA is “triggering” while the Abolitionist Book Club is not. Apparently, contrary to its advertising, the real ethos of Loyola is censorship.

Loyola forms a picture of the indictment that Charlie Kirk issued against American higher education. It touts “liberal arts” but actually schools students in the “ illiberal art” of “group-think.”

Loyola of New Orleans claims to be an environment where equity insures that “all students, staff, faculty, and visitors of all identities and backgrounds feel welcome and supported.” Yet, in reality, for many Christians and patriotic young Americans it is all a lie. They only find out there is no place for them after enrollment when everyone except “their kind” is welcomed. Like the gangsters of the fictional Rat Pack or disciples of “Tampon Tim,” Loyola hides its real-world effect behind a facade of benevolence.

Charlie Kirk was right. This type of higher education is a scam. It professes to be inclusive for all and claims a mission of charity. In reality, it is charitable only to itself and excludes those who refuse to conform to its ethos of censorship.

Robert M. Levy PsyschodadRobert@gmail.com Subscribe Free at RLevy.Substack.com

Robert M. Levy grew up in Moore County and graduated from Pinecrest High School. He earned a BA in history and sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where his honors thesis on the Wilmington Rebellion of 1898 became part of the university’s library collection.

Admitted to the California State Bar in 1978, Levy practiced law for 40 years in California and Maryland, focusing on family and criminal law, including work with juvenile offenders and abused children. His writing on affirmative action appeared in the San Fernando Valley Law Review, and he authored Divorce: A Cynical Experience. He later earned a North Carolina teaching certificate from UNC Charlotte and taught high school social studies across Moore County.

Levy has served as chairman of the Moore County School Board, president of the North Carolina Electoral College, chairman of the Moore County Republican Party, and a columnist for The Pilot in Southern Pines. He lives in Pinehurst with his wife, Linda, and they have three children and four grandchildren.

Republished with permission Dec. 28, 2025.

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