Lithuania: universities on the threshold

Abstract

The understanding of the role of higher education that characterized the Soviet era has been reborn in post-Soviet Lithuania as a blind drive towards utility, writes Almantas Samalavicius. The hard sciences have won the struggle over state funding at the expense of the humanities, while falling standards have caused an ongoing brain-drain to the West. The most recent reforms indicate that the only remedy on offer is based on the logic of the market, as Lithuanian universities steadily go the way of the rest of "common property" after independence.