{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/art-drama-and-music-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": "Art, Drama, and Music Teachers, Postsecondary", "soc_code": "25-1121", "category": "Education", "us_employment": 93560, "median_annual_wage": 78620 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 58, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 14, "embodiment": 13, "liability_shield": 2, "trust_premium": 16, "judgment_accountability": 13 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Diagnosing why a singer's soft palate is collapsing, demonstrating a phrase and having the student mirror it, or running a scene four times until the actor stops playing the result — these are real-time perceptual judgments made from sound, posture and breath in the room, which is why the score sits at 14 rather than higher: the art-history survey lecture, the syllabus, the rubric comments on a reflection paper and the accreditation assessment binder are all genuinely draftable by a model.", "embodiment": "The studio, kiln room, scene shop and rehearsal hall are the workplace — you are physically repositioning a wrist on a fingerboard, handling wet clay and solvents, blocking bodies on a stage, running lighting cues — which puts this above lab or classroom teaching, but at 13 rather than 18 because the spaces are institutional, scheduled and indoors, not the uncontrolled sites a field geologist or lineworker deals with.", "liability_shield": "No state licence gates postsecondary studio teaching; an MFA plus a performance or exhibition record is the credential, and hiring committees can and do appoint working artists as adjuncts with no teaching certification at all, so nothing legally reserves the classroom to you.", "trust_premium": "Students choose a program to study with a specific teacher, follow that teacher's studio for four years, and come back for recommendation letters and audition advice a decade later — the mentor lineage is literally what the degree is worth, and 16 not 20 only because general-education arts appreciation sections and large lecture surveys are taught to students who will never learn your name.", "judgment_accountability": "You decide who gets cast, who advances from the sophomore review, whose portfolio goes to the juried show, and how to grade work with no answer key — calls that redirect a student's career and that you defend to the student, the parent and the dean, though within departmental jury structures and grade-appeal procedures that keep it at 13 rather than a solo high-stakes 17." }, "rationale": "The core of this job — standing in a studio adjusting a student's bow arm, running a scene until an actor finds the beat, critiquing a canvas in front of the class — is embodied, real-time coaching that AI cannot deliver. What AI does erode is the surrounding load: syllabus construction, lecture slides on art history, rubric-based written feedback, and grant/assessment paperwork. The bigger threat is not the model but enrollment decline and adjunctification in arts departments, which shrinks the number of people who get to do this work at all.", "outlook": "The teaching itself stays human, but the number of full-time arts faculty lines keeps contracting under enrollment and budget pressure, concentrating work in performance-facing and recruitment-critical roles.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Accreditation-backed 'human-taught studio hours' requirements: NASM/NAST/NASD (the national arts accrediting associations) already specify contact-hour and applied-lesson minimums for degree programs; an explicit rule that AI-mediated instruction cannot count toward applied studio/private lesson hours would harden the human premium for conservatory-style teaching. Also visible in motion: faculty-union contract language (e.g., AAUP and CFA chapters, and the 2023 WGA/SAG precedent spreading to campus bargaining) barring AI-generated instructional content from replacing course sections.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift: the occupation genuinely has two tiers. If slide decks, art-history lecture content, rubric-scored written critique, and assessment paperwork are fully absorbed, the residual day is live studio coaching, jury/portfolio evaluation, and casting/repertoire decisions — none of which current models perform. This raises the share of the day AI cannot do without any new law.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Formalized gatekeeping accountability: if institutions make named faculty individually responsible for signed juried decisions — audition and portfolio admissions, degree recital pass/fail, MFA thesis defense outcomes — with documented appeal processes naming the deciding faculty member (a direction Title IX-style due-process reform and student grade-appeal litigation is pushing), the ambiguous consequential call becomes explicitly owned.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Shop- and safety-supervision mandates in studio disciplines: OSHA-driven and campus-insurer requirements for a trained human present when students operate kilns, welding equipment, printmaking chemicals, table saws in scene shops, or rigging in theater spaces. Insurer refusal to cover unsupervised studio access is the concrete mechanism.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "The binding constraint is not model capability but seat count. Enrollment decline in arts majors and adjunctification mean the score can rise while the number of people holding the job falls; a high trust premium on studio teaching does not protect headcount if departments are consolidated or closed." }, "adjudication": { "method": "two independent runs agreed on the verdict", "outcome": "corroborated", "run_totals": [ 58, 63 ], "run_verdicts": [ "EXPOSED", "EXPOSED" ] }, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 95110, "wage": 66930 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 94310, "wage": 69960 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 94060, "wage": 69530 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 91170, "wage": 69690 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 94720, "wage": 75940 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 97830, "wage": 77280 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 101500, "wage": 80360 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 97890, "wage": 80190 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 93560, "wage": 78620 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -1.6, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "secondary-school-teachers-except-special-and-career-technical-education", "title": "Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 69, "median_wage": 72040, "overlap": 80, "skills_to_close": [ "Mathematics", "Coordination", "Judgment and Decision Making", "Negotiation" ] }, { "slug": "therapists-all-other", "title": "Therapists, All Other", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 72, "median_wage": 77930, "overlap": 72, "skills_to_close": [ "Service Orientation", "Social Perceptiveness", "Negotiation", "Judgment and Decision Making" ] }, { "slug": "special-education-teachers-secondary-school", "title": "Special Education Teachers, Secondary School", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 73, "median_wage": 74260, "overlap": 72, "skills_to_close": [ "Service Orientation", "Coordination", "Mathematics", "Negotiation" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }