The growth of higher educational expenditures attributable to new social demands is considered. The main objective is to identify the sources of these costs, to estimate their amount, and to judge their impact on higher education. Colleges and universities, like many other types of organizations, are subject to social pressures and governmental programs resulting in significant increases in expenditures. It is proposed that socially imposed costs should be defined to include positive and negative effects on both costs and income in the long run. Socially imposed costs may be usefully subdivided into costs for actual program operations and costs associated with compliance or information. The period of time over which socially imposed costs are measured needs to be specified, and a distinction needs to be made between the increasing of costs and the changing of priorities. Higher education may have more difficulty than profit-making enterprises in shifting social costs to consumers and in handling new social costs because of staffing levels. An inventory of the sources of socially imposed costs to which colleges and universities are subject is presented. These sources include personal security, personal opportunity, consumer protection, work standards, environmental protection, natural resource use, tax reform, the need for knowledge and information, due process in matters affecting individuals including formal grievance and appeal procedures, the adoption of more open and democratic decision-making procedures, and the protection of individual privacy. (SW)