Is the (frat) party over? Why Gen Z could spell trouble for Greek life.

The once-secretive rituals of college Greek life have leapt off campus and onto the screens of nearly every Gen Z-er. We’re now living in a post-RushTok, post-Bama Rush-documentary era. But the generation of students now roaming U.S. college campuses looks very different from the traditional stereotypes of sorority and fraternity members: Compared to previous generations, they drink and party less. They’re more concerned about making and spending money. And they’re more diverse, queer and highly value authenticity and independence. Yet, Gen Z is especially lonely and hungry for connection — a desire that sororities and fraternities aim to fulfill.

But does Gen Z want sororities and fraternities to fill that void in their lives? It’s complicated, apparently. By some measures, the share of students involved in Greek life has dropped considerably in the past decade or so. Yet many major sororities and fraternities are growing, especially in the South — even as the so-called enrollment cliff, a steep drop off in college enrollment, threatens to further knock down their numbers.

To find out if the fall of Greek life in the U.S. is really upon us, we spoke to experts and Gen Z students about whether sorority and fraternity membership still retains alpha status on campus — or is approaching its omega.

Greek life, by the numbers

It’s surprisingly hard to get a good handle on which direction Greek life membership is trending. It’s not just that there’s an entire alphabet soup of fraternities and sororities, recognized and unrecognized, to assess; there are also several different governing bodies that oversee fraternities and sororities and collect data on them. Colleges are also divided into several classifications, including the Power 5, i.e., schools in the five large athletic conferences, while public universities are classified as Regional Comprehensive Universities (RCUS). Many schools fall into neither category. But here’s what we could gather about the statistical state of Greek life:

The role of the ‘enrollment cliff’

The number of students expected to go to college is falling as of this year, and that’s because of several factors, including the declining birth rate, rising costs and increasing interest in trade school and other professional opportunities over college among Gen Z-ers. That’s a problem for fraternities and sororities, but also colleges in general. “The question is, ‘Are students going to college?’ [Gen Z] has been referred to as the ‘toolbelt generation,’” because even kids who did advanced placement (AP) classes in high school are choosing to go to trade schools, Corey Seemiller, a Wright State University professor renowned for her research on Gen Z, tells Yahoo. The Power 5 schools (think: University of Alabama, University of Mississippi, etc.) and their Greek organizations are thus far weathering the enrollment cliff pretty well. But the demographic shift is a known concern for the sororities and fraternities at smaller schools and those in the Northeast and Midwest, Cody Dunlap, associate director of fraternity and sorority life housing at the University of South Carolina, tells Yahoo. “Enrollment cliffs are going to impact various campuses [and] smaller and more regional ones are struggling to meet their quotas” of students enrolled in the schools generally, says Dunlap, who authored an article on the subject for the Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors.

Too few students mean that a college will struggle financially, and extracurricular programs like sororities and fraternities are often hit hard, says Weatherford. For campuses where sororities and fraternities have houses, their residences are among the largest expenses and often the first to go when membership — and, along with it, funding — dwindles, explains Seemiller.

For the time being, though, Greek life is still very much available to students who want to join it, with new chapters even opening on many campuses, according to Weatherford. But do Gen Z-ers want to rush?

Some Gen Z-ers see Greek life as fake, rigid and just too expensive

Shae Smolik had a fairly clear impression of Greek life before she arrived as a freshman at Arizona State University. “I didn’t want to join because I’m a very social person as it is, but I also don’t like anyone fake, or people that go behind people’s backs,” Smolik tells Yahoo. Smolik’s oldest (and more introverted) sister had joined a sorority at Iowa State University in the hopes of making friends. But she was bullied so badly that she dropped out by her sophomore year. “She fell into a depression,” Smolik says. “They say it’s a sisterhood, but for her it wasn’t, because she was getting bullied.”

Still, when Smolik saw her roommate rush, it looked fun. “It was eye-opening for me because maybe it was different here and maybe I should try it out,” she recalls. But as time went on, she watched friends drop out of their sororities after their free time was devoured by Greek life commitments. They also had to pay steep fines for “the littlest things,” such as missing a single chapter meeting, Smolik says. She knew she didn’t want that: “I didn’t come to college to get more rules put on me.”

More rules is a red flag for many in Gen Z, according to Seemiller, the scholar studying the generation. “Any time you move toward something like a blanket expectation and away from something customizable, you’re misaligning with Gen Z,” she says. “They want customizable experiences, and if you go into a sorority or a fraternity, those are some of the more governed and regulated organizations on a college campus.”

Like Smolik, 25-year-old Demario Jordan Williams was initially interested in joining one of the historically Black “Divine Nine” fraternities when he was attending the University of Arkansas. But he was turned off because “most people don’t join for the solid reasons of serving their community,” he tells Yahoo. “They join for shallow reasons: sex, popularity and just to have some type of status.” That doesn’t jibe with Williams, or many Gen Z-ers, says Seemiller. If Greek life organizations aren’t responsive to Gen Z’s concern with social justice issues such as trans, gay and lesbian rights and racism, “then students will not join them, and they will end up petering out,” she says.

And then there are the more practical mismatches between Gen Z and Greek Life. Gen Z has been less involved on campuses in general, and they’re pragmatically minded. Seemiller notes that more college students are working while going to college than in the recent past. The time and financial commitments of Greek life cut into their income two-fold. “This is a generation highly concerned about money,” she says. “They have kind of a scarcity mindset, so the idea of not only having enough to participate in something as costly as Greek life can be” — up to several thousand dollars per semester — “but also the time taken away from moneymaking is a concern too.”

Gen Z is not a monolith — and sisterhood and brotherhood are still draws

All that said, plenty of Gen Z students still sign up for and enjoy Greek life. Macy Peyton, a 19-year-old sophomore at Virginia Commonwealth University, is one of them. She had what one might call a stereotypically Gen Z view of sororities before joining one too. “In high school, sorority life was kind of explained to me as having to pay for your friends,” she tells Yahoo. No one else in her family had been involved in Greek life, and she didn’t know much about it other than the Rushtok videos her best friend had shown her. Peyton didn’t initially rush. But during the first semester of college, “I felt like something was missing,” she says. She wanted to be more involved in volunteer work. And, though she had plenty of friends, they were mostly people she’d known before college. “I wasn’t meeting new people like I should have,” says Peyton.

So in the spring, she joined Alpha Sigma Alpha, where she pays $453 per semester in dues, in installments. “Now I have those tight-knit relationships with a bunch of other girls and no one is made to feel like an outcast in my sorority, which is how I felt in my high school community.” In fact, many of the high school friends who reinforced her belief that sororities were pay-to-play friendships have now gone Greek too, Peyton says.

Dunlap, the AFA associate housing director, acknowledges the negative stereotypes about fraternities and sororities, but says it’s OK if Greek life isn’t right for everyone. “Some people will say you’re paying for your friends … but the people who are in or have joined a [Greek] organization have found something important to them,” he says. “Or maybe they’re an only child and want something akin to a sibling.” While a sense of individualism may be widespread among Gen Z, so is a longing for those sisterhood and brotherhood types of relationships, says Weatherford. “Gen Z and those women coming after them do talk a lot about their experience of loneliness — it’s a generational piece of who they are,” she says. “I think they are looking for connections and our [sorority] organizations provide them with that sense of connection.”

So while some outspoken factions of Gen Z (looking at you, anti-Greek Reddit) may be averse to sorority and fraternity life, and campus houses may be threatened by low enrollment, these institutions, which stretch back as far as 1776, likely aren’t going anywhere. “Fraternities and sororities have really stood the test of time,” says Seemiller. “They’ve been through the Great Depression, and all these things” — including COVID — “and I don’t think this [era] will set back Greek life in general.”