Drawing on Bourdieu's theory and using Durkheim's concepts of "social fact" and "regulation", this article examines the place held by public universities within the French higher education (HE) system, breaking with the purely bureaucratic vision prevailing in France today. By setting aside some of the main received ideas about the effects and meanings of student selection and drop-out, the article suggests that public universities play an essential role in regulating the successive flows of first-generation students through French HE. It is precisely because public universities are non-selective that they are able to play this role. Finally, the distribution of HE choices and students' dropping out are both considered as products of a structural and institutional process of regulation. [This article was translated by Lucy Garnier.]