Governance and Management of Higher Education: Research Trends in Lithuania

Abstract

Aiming to reveal contemporary trends in the area of research on governance and management of the higher
education institutions in Lithuania, the article analyses scientific issues and solutions that have been presented in
the last decade monographs and dissertations.
As the analysis shows, higher education in Lithuania has been undergoing huge deformations, so its ambitions
are to enter the common space of higher education in Europe. So academic community tries to catch up with the
developed countries. Therefore the most research works have been directed toward justification of fundamental
concepts, such as democratic or massive higher education and to emphasize corresponding ideas necessary for the
promotion of reforms in higher education. The significance of these aims is envisaged in laying theoretical foundations
for improvement of governance and management in the institutions and system of higher education. There are
also issues researched concerning culture fluctuation of academic community, quality assurance and evaluation as
well as management of finance, that point out the strive of researchers for the adoption of “new management”
conditions.
The analysis of the above mentioned scientific works enabled to draw out conclusions: researches have been
focused mainly on the control of introducing change in higher education institutions settings, followed by such
categories as acculturation, modernization and quality assurance.