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According to statistics, greek life has been in steady decline for the last two decades. Many of the top, elite, institutions have done away with greek life entirely and a number of public institutions only allow greek organizations on their campuses because of the 1st amendment right of assembly, but quickly ban them as soon as there is solid reason to. From an administrative perspective, as long as the presence of greek letter organizations unnecessarily places institutions in a compromising position of escalating liability, then it is likely that greek membership will continue to decline simply based on the decrease in active chapters.
Having attended an HBCU I can say that a number of the reasons listed so far are very applicable to that environment. A bad image does alot to hurt any organization, so greek letter organizations are not exempt from the effects of that alone. Personally I can say that the biggest turn offs are attitude and hazing. No one in their right mind wants to be disrespected or abused. Being "elite", or exclusive, and acting like an elitist are two different things, and unfortunately many greeks apparently don't understand the difference. Until members of greek lettered organizations learn to first respect themselves, secondly respect their respective organizations, and thirdly, respect prospective members, it is probable that the decline in membership will continue unabated.
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