Students who do not earn the required credential typically face blocked access to academic institutions, potentially reducing their future opportunities. “Second-chance” alternatives have emerged as formal avenues to help these students bypass the standard route. Although these paths are intended to improve equity, they may instead function as “compensatory advantage” mechanisms. Under this theory, families with greater resources are better able to compensate for a child’s academic underachievement, ensuring that low grades or other setbacks do not derail progress toward an academic degree. By contrast, students from disadvantaged backgrounds often lack the necessary information, support, and funds to utilize these programs effectively.

Method and Data:
Drawing on administrative data for Israeli citizens born in the late 1970s and early 1980s, this study examines who manages to access higher education via second-chance routes, focusing on parental education, class status, and ethnic origin. The dataset identifies students who left high school without a matriculation diploma but still enrolled in a higher education institution by 2016, labeling them “second-chance users.” A logistic regression approach reveals how various background factors predict the likelihood of using second-chance pathways. Additional analysis explores whether those who entered higher education through these alternative routes later earn incomes comparable to students who followed the main route.

Key Findings:
The results consistently indicate that second-chance alternatives magnify, rather than diminish, traditional inequalities. While students from affluent families already enjoy advantages in the main system, these advantages grow among individuals who initially failed to secure a matriculation diploma. When high school outcomes were poor, those with higher-status parents—whether measured by education, occupational class, or privileged ethnic origin—were more likely to make successful use of second-chance programs. These students effectively “compensated” for earlier shortcomings and accessed higher education at rates far exceeding disadvantaged students with similarly weak high school records. Furthermore, the analysis of later earnings shows that advantaged students who used second-chance alternatives largely closed the gap in future income relative to their advantaged peers who had taken the “normal” route. By contrast, disadvantaged students who attempted second-chance pathways did not experience similar long-term compensation in terms of earnings.

Contribution and Implications:
This study illustrates how well-intentioned second-chance policies can inadvertently serve as safety nets for students from already resource-rich families, thereby reinforcing social stratification. Although some second-chance programs explicitly target underrepresented groups, they often fail to address deeper structural obstacles—cost, informational barriers, lack of confidence, and limited institutional support—that discourage or derail disadvantaged students. The findings highlight that even in an era of educational expansion, the interplay between institutional structures and family resources can perpetuate inequality unless interventions are deliberately designed to prioritize those with the greatest need.

Keywords: Second-chance alternatives, higher education inequality, compensatory advantage.