{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/architecture-teachers-postsecondary/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Architecture Teachers, Postsecondary",
    "soc_code": "25-1031",
    "category": "Education",
    "us_employment": 7700,
    "median_annual_wage": 96870
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 58,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 13,
    "embodiment": 11,
    "liability_shield": 5,
    "trust_premium": 16,
    "judgment_accountability": 13
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Desk crits on an in-progress model, mid-review course corrections, and teaching a student to see why their section is lying require reading unfinished work in real time — but the same person also writes structures lecture notes, grades codes-and-materials quizzes, and assembles precedent decks, and that half of the load is already draftable, which lands it at 13 rather than 17.",
    "embodiment": "You are on your feet in studio for hours, handling chipboard and basswood models, running the laser cutter and shop orientation, and leading site and building tours — physical, but in a climate-controlled studio and shop rather than a scaffold or a live jobsite, so 11 not 16.",
    "liability_shield": "Most tenure-line architecture faculty hold a professional licence and many keep a practice, but NAAB accredits the program, not the individual instructor, and nothing in your teaching contract requires a stamp — the licence is a hiring credential and a credibility signal, not a legal chokepoint, which is why this sits at 5.",
    "trust_premium": "Studio culture is built on a named critic: students choose your section, carry your criticism into thesis, and come back years later for the recommendation letter and the office introduction — the mentorship is the credential the degree can't print, hence 16.",
    "judgment_accountability": "You decide whose thesis is ready for a jury, whether a scheme is worth pushing another three weeks or killing, and how to grade design where there is no answer key — real, consequential calls, but bounded by department curricula, NAAB student performance criteria, and appealable grades, so 13 rather than 17."
  },
  "rationale": "The core of the job is studio: standing over a student's drawings and physical models, giving desk crits, running pin-ups and juries, and teaching hand and digital craft in a shared space — none of which current AI or robotics can do. What AI does absorb is the surrounding paperwork: lecture decks, syllabi, history/theory reading summaries, precedent research, rubric-based written feedback, and grant and accreditation narrative drafting. The real pressure on this occupation is budgetary, not technological: enrollment in architecture programs and the adjunctification of teaching load determine headcount more than automation does.",
  "outlook": "Studio teaching survives largely intact through 2035, but the number of full-time lines keeps shrinking with architecture enrollment, and lecture-heavy history/theory positions consolidate fastest.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "NAAB (the sole US accreditor for professional architecture degrees) writing into its next Conditions for Accreditation an explicit requirement that a named human faculty member of record certify each student's attainment of Student Criteria, and that AI-generated assessment cannot substitute — parallel to how the 2020 Conditions already require documented evidence of student work reviewed by faculty. Also: institutional/board rules requiring the studio instructor of record to hold an NCARB-registered license for professional-practice and structures courses, which ties teaching to a personally-held credential.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Formal delegation to studio faculty of AI-use adjudication: program handbooks and honor-code procedures naming the instructor as the person who determines whether a student's generative-design output constitutes their own work, with appeal records. This is already appearing in university academic-integrity policies post-2023 and makes an unavoidably ambiguous, consequential call the faculty member's own.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift as the lecture/history/theory tier is absorbed: if programs consolidate survey and precedent-research courses into AI-assisted large sections and reallocate the surviving faculty lines to desk crit, model shop, and jury hours, the remaining job is almost entirely the tier machines cannot do. Watch for course-catalog restructuring that raises studio contact hours per FTE while cutting lecture sections.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Already high and near its practical ceiling; the only visible upward mechanism is accreditation or state-board rules requiring minimum in-person studio contact hours for a professional degree, which would make the human-taught studio a purchase requirement rather than a preference.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "None of these touch the actual binding constraint. Headcount here is set by enrollment in professional architecture programs and by the substitution of adjuncts for tenure lines; a stronger accreditation shield can protect the role's content while the number of roles still falls. A high register score and a shrinking occupation are fully compatible."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 7280,
        "wage": 80050
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 6880,
        "wage": 86980
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 6780,
        "wage": 87900
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 6910,
        "wage": 90880
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 5950,
        "wage": 95160
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 6420,
        "wage": 93220
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 8350,
        "wage": 105770
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 9120,
        "wage": 101480
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 7700,
        "wage": 96870
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 5.8,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}