Mayoral candidate Bill Daley is proposing to offer free community college to all Chicago Public School graduates by merging the nation’s third-largest school system with the Chicago City Colleges. Daley’s plan would create the nation’s first pre-K–14 school system and better align Chicago’s public schools to produce more young people ready for work without the burden of college debt. A study from the Georgetown Center on Economics and the Workforce, says two-thirds of new jobs today require some post-secondary education. A second report, also from Georgetown, says there are 30 million jobs in America that do not require a four-year degree. Both reports together suggest Chicago should focus more on career training programs in high school and post-secondary institutions to meet workforce needs and to spare young people the costs of four-year college. Today, just 18 percent of CPS students earn a four-year college degree, and there is no reliable data on the number earning a two-year degree. Daley is setting a goal of boosting the percentage of CPS graduates earning post-secondary degrees – both two-year and four-year — to 50 percent in a decade. Daley acknowledged Chicago’s STAR Program, which covers tuition at City Colleges for CPS graduates with a 3.0-grade point average.