Pyle enrolled at Indiana University in 1919, aspiring to become a journalist. However, IU did not offer a degree in journalism at that time, so Pyle majored in economics and took as many journalism courses as he could. Pyle began studying journalism in his sophomore year, the same year he joined Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and began working on the "Indiana Daily Student", the student-written newspaper. During his junior year Pyle became the newspaper's city editor and its news editor; he also worked on the "Arbutus", the campus yearbook, although he did not enjoy the desk-bound work. Pyle's simple, storytelling writing style, which he developed while a student at IU, later became his trademark style as a professional journalist and earned him millions of readers as a columnist for Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate.