In 2003, there were 31 state higher education establishment (15 university-type establishments and 16 colleges) and 17 private higher education establishments (6 university-type establishments and 11 colleges), 17 state research institutes, 18 university research institutes and 8 state research establishments in Lithuania. In addition, various state and public institutions and business entities take part in R&D activities. In 2002, 152 institutions were active in R&D, in total.
Non-university-type higher education establishments – colleges and private university-type higher education establishments – are rather new structural elements of the Lithuanian R&D system. Colleges started to be found in 2000 after adoption of the Law on Higher Education, and the first private university-type higher education establishment was founded in 1999.
Since 2002, the estimation of the R&D staff expressed in full-time equivalents entirely meets the requirements of the Frascati Manual. The total R&D staff in full-time equivalents was equal to 9 531 in 2002. Among them, there were 6 326 researchers, 1 490 technicians and other equivalent staff, and 1 715 of other supporting staff. In full-time equivalents per thousand workers, the total R&D staff made up 8.3, and researchers – 3.9.
The largest part of the researchers (66.2 %) was in the higher education sector. In the Government sector, there were 29.6 % of researchers, and 4.2 % of researchers worked for the business sector. Calculating in full-time equivalents per thousand workers, the researchers in the higher education, state and business sectors made 2.6, 1.2 and 0.2 correspondingly.
In 2001, there were 0.25 new PhDs working in the area of science and technologies per thousand population aged 25 to 34 years. It is worth mentioning that the EU has narrowed the area of science and technologies (clinical medicine, veterinary and social sciences have been eliminated) leaving natural and physical sciences, mathematics and statistics, computer science, engineering and engineering businesses, production and processing, architecture and civil engineering.
An average annual percentage increase of a number of new PhDs since 1995 is particularly high (25.2) in Lithuania.