{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/biological-science-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": "Biological Science Teachers, Postsecondary", "soc_code": "25-1042", "category": "Education", "us_employment": 50190, "median_annual_wage": 84620 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 53, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 11, "embodiment": 11, "liability_shield": 5, "trust_premium": 14, "judgment_accountability": 12 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "An 11 reflects the split inside one job: the 200-seat intro-bio lecture, its slide deck, its multiple-choice bank, and its canned lab manual are all reproducible without you, while supervising an undergrad who just contaminated a cell line, calibrating a microtome, or reading a student's messy honors thesis draft for conceptual errors still requires you in the room — if you taught only lecture-hall genetics you'd sit near 6, if you ran a research lab full-time you'd sit near 15.", "embodiment": "11 puts you above the desk-bound faculty because teaching lab means gloves on, autoclave running, dissection trays, fume hoods, chemical hygiene and BSL-1/2 protocols, plus field sections at a pond or forest plot — but it isn't a 16 because the environment is a controlled teaching lab with known reagents and a written protocol, not an unpredictable job site.", "liability_shield": "5/20 because a PhD plus departmental hiring is the only gate: no state licensure, no board certification, nothing that legally requires a credentialed human to deliver a biology course, and accreditation reviews credit hours and program outcomes rather than named individuals, so the institution can restructure who fronts a section at will.", "trust_premium": "14 is earned on the recommendation letter, the lab-position offer, and the office-hours conversation where a sophomore decides whether they can do science — those depend on a named person who has watched a specific student at the bench for two semesters, and that is why departments still keep faculty even as content moves online.", "judgment_accountability": "12 covers the calls you actually own — an academic-integrity report, a grade appeal, whether a student is ready to co-author, whether a protocol is safe for undergrads to run — but curriculum outcomes, prerequisites, and grading floors arrive from the department and program review, so the discretion is real but bounded rather than the unreviewed high-stakes judgment of a 17." }, "rationale": "Lecture drafting, slide decks, exam item writing, syllabus updates, and first-pass grading of short answers are already handled well by current models, and much of the content-delivery layer of intro biology is commoditized. What resists is the wet lab — running dissections, microscopy, cell culture, and PCR benches with novices who break things — plus research mentorship, thesis supervision, and being the person a student trusts when they're deciding whether to go to grad school. The modal worker here is increasingly contingent (adjunct/lecturer) rather than tenured, and that tier is the most exposed: enrollment-driven, teaching-only, and easiest to substitute with larger sections plus AI-assisted course materials.", "outlook": "Content delivery gets absorbed into AI-assisted large sections while lab-intensive, research-mentoring, and advising roles hold; expect fewer teaching-only lines and more consolidation around faculty who own benchwork and student outcomes.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift: if lecture/assessment production is fully absorbed by AI course-material platforms, the residual job concentrates in wet-lab instruction, biosafety-level supervision, undergraduate research mentorship, and IACUC/IBC protocol training — tiers current models cannot execute. Watchable signal: department job postings retitled toward 'laboratory coordinator / research mentor' with lecture hours reduced.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "If accreditors and licensing pipelines (e.g. nursing programs under CCNE/ACEN, pre-med prerequisite rules, MCAT-feeder requirements) hold firm that biology lab credit requires in-person hands-on hours rather than virtual simulation, the physical lab-supervision share of the job is protected. Watch state nursing boards and ABET/regional accreditor rulings on online lab equivalency, which currently vary.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Biosafety and animal-use compliance is the one real hook: institutional rules requiring a named credentialed instructor of record to sign BSL-2 protocols, chemical hygiene plans, and IACUC training attestations, with OSHA/NIH-guideline exposure attaching personally. If NIH or a state adopts explicit individual-signatory requirements for teaching-lab biosafety oversight, this rises. Also watch faculty-of-record signature requirements for transfer credit and Title IV eligibility.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "If institutions formalize the instructor as the accountable adjudicator for AI-assisted academic integrity findings and for competency sign-off on lab practicals — a named human decision that cannot be delegated to detection software, as several university senates have been drafting since 2023 — the ambiguous-call ownership becomes explicit rather than informal.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Narrow route only: graduate admissions and fellowship committees continue to weight named-human recommendation letters and PI mentorship, so thesis-supervising faculty retain a premium buyers actively pay for. This does not extend to the contingent intro-lecture tier, where no realistic premium exists.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "The levers protect the lab-and-mentorship core, not the modal adjunct. Enrollment economics cap the upside: departments facing demographic decline consolidate sections regardless of what any dimension score says, and biosafety-signatory duties can be concentrated in one or two faculty per department rather than spread across the headcount." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 49910, "wage": 78240 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 51770, "wage": 82550 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 53090, "wage": 83300 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 51500, "wage": 85600 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 47690, "wage": 81440 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 49920, "wage": 81650 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 52050, "wage": 83920 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 53250, "wage": 83460 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 50190, "wage": 84620 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 0.6, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "health-specialties-teachers-postsecondary", "title": "Health Specialties Teachers, Postsecondary", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 69, "median_wage": 107310, "overlap": 82, "skills_to_close": [ "Operation and Control" ] }, { "slug": "nursing-instructors-and-teachers-postsecondary", "title": "Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 71, "median_wage": 80250, "overlap": 74, "skills_to_close": [ "Coordination", "Management of Personnel Resources", "Social Perceptiveness", "Technology Design" ] }, { "slug": "physician-assistants", "title": "Physician Assistants", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 77, "median_wage": 135880, "overlap": 71, "skills_to_close": [ "Operations Monitoring", "Operation and Control", "Quality Control Analysis", "Troubleshooting" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }