Thousands of students in the US soon won’t be able to graduate high school unless they can prove they’ve lined up a job or apprenticeship, enlisted in the military, been accepted to college or joined a “gap-year” program.

The program, set to take take effect in Chicago in 2020, is supposed to get scholars in the city’s struggling school system planning for the future early, Mayor Rahm Emanuel told the Washington Post.

“We are going to help kids have a plan, because they’re going to need it to succeed,” Emanuel said. “You cannot have kids think that 12th grade is done.”

A member of New York state’s education-policy board agreed that it’s good idea to prod high-school students to have a plan for the future — but stopped short of making it a graduation requirement for Empire State high-schoolers.

“I’m concerned about making it a requirement if there aren’t job opportunities or you can’t afford to go to college,” said Board of Regents member Kathleen Cashin, a former New York City regional school superintendent.

“We could do more upfront. Students should have work experience during their high-school years. Getting a foot in the door would be good thing,” she said.

Critics of Chicago’s plan — the first of its kind in the US — say it doesn’t do anything to actually help kids succeed once they’re in college or work, and will increase the workload for already overwhelmed high-school career counselors.

They also note that all Chicago public-school grads are guaranteed enrollment in local community colleges anyway — just as they are in New York — so it’s no sweat for seniors to meet the requirement, since they just have to be accepted and not actually attend.

“It looks as if it’s more for public consumption than the good of the students,” said David Bloomfield, education professor at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, to The Post.

“If they’re not prepared to succeed, what’s the good of that? The point of a high-quality diploma … is to prepare students for college and careers. This doesn’t meet that goal. It gives the appearance of meeting the goal, without authentic preparation.”