Demographic change has very different faces in the various European countries. The term usually describes the shift of age structures through changes in birth rates, migration phenomena and the increased life expectation of the respective population. These more quantitative developments also reveal implications of a qualitative and structural nature in so far as they contribute to a shift between and within socio-economic and socio-cultural groups, fostering heterogeneity in these dimensions.
This study pursues various goals, with the main and basic aim to construct an empirically resilient framework of orientation for programmes and policies concentrating on diversity in selected neighbouring countries. Therefore, the study is interested in collecting different approaches and interpretations of heterogeneity or diversity and to draw some conclusions from them concerning lessons learnt for German HEIs and possibly the German system as a whole.