The paper focuses in particular on the qualitative outcomes of a multinational TSER-project on the precarious situation of 'non-traditional' adult students in the German university system. On the base of serious statistical data, the presentation shall concentrate on the individual reconstruction of study opportunities and obstacles. An interesting result is the discovery of three main types of coping with the unaccustomed academic situation: the 'integration type', who seems to be able to integrate strange university experiences in the framework of the original social background, the 'educational climber type', who tends to loose his/her former 'social capital' through university training and ends up in a situation of biographical risk, and the 'patchwork type', who shows a remarkable virtuosity in starting new life phases, however, does not succeed in standing them. The interpretation will be based on a conceptual framework that links socio-biographical concepts with some interesting ideas of Bourdieu's thinking. It tries to explain why in particular German universities and even the newly founded reform institutions of the 1960s and 1970s (Gesamthochschulen) create structural problems for 'non-traditionals'. The concentration of the extremely counterproductive situation at German universities seems to be a European provocation, because results in Sweden, Denmark, UK, Ire- land, even Belgium and France show quite a different profile (perhaps a 'PISA effect' in Higher Education?). The author of this abstract has been the responsible senior researcher of the German part of the study, which also included Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Spain, Sweden and the UK.