Mass education has the goal of guaranteeing the same education to all in order to moderate differences between individuals and promote a kind of "equality of opportunity." Nonetheless, it seems clear that lower-class youths do not benefit as much from their degree or university experience as do those who come from more privileged backgrounds. The present study statistically analyses the evolution of higher education since 1965 with respect to social origin in order to determine whether the massification of education has really been accompanied by democratization. Its conclusion is twofold: This evolution has indeed allowed for a certain democratization of higher education by offering new perspectives for the middle and lower classes; but nevertheless it has not always granted them access to prestigious courses of study, so that one still finds two systems of higher education which are relatively separate and whose separation remains a function of social origin.