Most of today's societies are confronted with an increasing necessity to legitimate the organization of their access to higher education. Commonly used as a yardstick to compare societies, the level of access to higher education is often presented as an indicator of the level of development and the capacity to produce knowledge, as well as a workforce adapted to the economic and social development. But increasingly, the issue is shifting from the outputs of general access to higher education to the specific institutions from which students gain admission. This raises the question of the fairness of higher education systems, their ability not to duplicate society but to produce social mobility, at least in the students' influx to and within the higher education sector. (Contains 1 footnote.)