Lithuanian Annual Strategic Review

The paper emphasizes that higher education1 is becoming a factor of national security by producing conditions for development of society and the state; countries that have developed higher education the most are highly developed and secure. The relationship of the middle class as the most important national security agent to higher education and the status of the public good of the latter are emphasized separately. The primary problem lies in the fact that it is the disproportions in the development of higher education that determine the increasing gap between developed and developing countries. Backwardness is a factor in the loss of national security. Critical assessment is given to the inconsistently prepared higher education reform which from the instrument of the projected strategic breakthrough turned into a crawling-out-of-difficulties process. Causes of such a situation can be discerned not only in the indefiniteness of the national interests of a small and far from strong state in the European space of research and studies under formation as well as in the globalization-induced uncertainty, but also in the lack of corresponding competences, disregard of experts, and short-term party interests. The article summary states that contradictory and inadequate political decisions in terms of the needs of national security in the area of research and studies are pernicious not only to higher education itself, but become a cause of the backwardness and insecurity of society and the state. A strategy for consecutive and gradual reforms is presented as an alternative to radical and, therefore, ineffective reforms.