Austerity in disguise: attempts at reshaping Lithuanian higher education

Abstract

It remains to be seen whether this gloomy prognosis will be confirmed by further deveopments within Lithuania's higher education system. Will austerity - 'a habitual for of discourse for international leaders and creditor nations' and 'an excuse not to think' (Jabko, 2013: 706-7; italics in original) - continue to prevail in the increasingly transnational contexts of higher education? So far, austerity measures - frequentiy introduced in the guise of financial incentives and disincentives - have had one undeniable effect on Lithuanian higher education: they have pushed public universities to adopt market mentality, to establish market relations with great rapidity and little forethough and to ignore or give up many of their previous social and cultural commitments. In their increasing reliance on market regulation universities have become knowledge-producing factories preoccupied with marketing and selling their products something that European universities were never meant to be.