The article presents the experience of the Republic of Lithuania in modernizing higher education. The method of document analysis was used, in particular, data from the European statistics, national statistics departments, and the State statistics service of Ukraine. The application of the method of generalization and comparison made it possible to compare the transformations of higher education systems in Lithuania and Ukraine. A number of problems typical for both countries that led to the introduction of a set of measures to improve the quality of educational services were found. They are the following: insufficient compliance with the requirements of employers, bureaucratization, mainly theoretical training, low competitiveness of graduates of higher education institutions in the labor market, slow introduction of modern information and communication technologies, outflow of young people to study in other countries of the European Union, and insufficient funding. The correlation between the introduction of effective mechanisms for monitoring higher education and the growth of the quality of educational services is demonstrated using the example of the Republic of Lithuania. It was found that the combination of two levels of monitoring-internal self-assessment and external expert quality assessment-gives the best result.