{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/chemistry-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": "Chemistry Teachers, Postsecondary", "soc_code": "25-1052", "category": "Education", "us_employment": 19980, "median_annual_wage": 93250 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 54, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 12, "embodiment": 13, "liability_shield": 3, "trust_premium": 14, "judgment_accountability": 12 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Writing the general-chemistry syllabus, generating stoichiometry and equilibrium problem sets with worked solutions, and marking multiple-choice or numeric-answer exams are already handled at usable quality by current tools, which caps this below the mixed range's midpoint; what pulls it up to 12 rather than 6 is the unscriptable half of the job — standing at a fume hood judging whether a student's setup is about to boil over, and reading a failed IR spectrum with the student to find where they went wrong.", "embodiment": "A 13 reflects that the teaching lab is a genuinely uncontrolled environment — open flames, concentrated acids, unpredictable undergraduates — and the instructor is physically present enforcing goggles, waste segregation, and fume-hood use, not just certifying that a procedure exists on paper; it stops at 13 rather than 18 because the lecture, office hours, and grading portion of the load is entirely screen-and-chalkboard work.", "liability_shield": "There is no state license to teach chemistry at a college — a PhD and a departmental appointment are the whole gate — so despite bearing real OSHA lab-safety and chemical-hygiene-plan duties, nothing personally attaches to you the way a PE stamp or medical license does, and the institution absorbs the exposure; the 3 rather than 0 is that hazardous-materials responsibility, which is delegated to you by name in most chemical hygiene plans.", "trust_premium": "At 14, this recognises that research-group mentorship, thesis advising, and the letters of recommendation that decide whether a student gets into a PhD program are irreplaceable relationship goods — a bot cannot vouch for someone's bench technique; it is not higher because the modal enrollee in a 300-seat intro section is interchangeable to you and you to them, and adjunct appointments break the multi-year continuity that would push this to 18.", "judgment_accountability": "Deciding whether a student's inconsistent yields are sloppy technique or a contaminated reagent lot, setting the curve on a failing exam, and calling whether an unfamiliar reaction is safe to let sophomores run are real discretionary calls, but they sit at 12 rather than 16 because course learning outcomes, ACS-aligned curricula, accreditation requirements, and departmental grade norms already define the boundaries you are choosing within." }, "rationale": "Lecture content, problem sets, exam writing, and even first-pass grading of stoichiometry and mechanism questions are the kind of structured text work AI already does at usable quality, and open courseware plus tutoring bots erode the value of the standard general-chemistry lecture. What does not transfer is the wet lab: supervising students handling reagents, enforcing hazard protocol, diagnosing why a titration or synthesis failed, and running a research group. The modal worker here is heavily weighted toward large intro-course teaching and adjunct or non-tenure appointments, where enrollment economics — not AI capability — is the nearer threat.", "outlook": "Lecture-only and adjunct intro-chemistry roles get squeezed hard by AI tutoring and course consolidation over the next decade, while lab-intensive, research-active, and accreditation-owning positions hold steady.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Institutional and insurer requirements that undergraduate wet-lab sections have a credentialed instructor physically present at a fixed student ratio — e.g. ACS Committee on Professional Training approval criteria and campus EH&S/OSHA lab standard (29 CFR 1910.1450) chemical hygiene plans naming a responsible person — plus accreditation refusal to count remote/simulated labs toward degree lab hours. If ACS guidelines explicitly cap virtual-lab substitution, the lab-supervision core becomes non-substitutable and the job re-weights toward it.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift: if lecture delivery and first-pass grading of stoichiometry are absorbed by courseware, what remains is lab instruction, oral/practical assessment, and diagnosing failed procedures. Visible driver is the shift to in-person proctored and oral exams because take-home problem sets are no longer assessable — several chemistry departments have already moved general-chemistry assessment back to invigilated paper and practical exams.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Formalizing the instructor as the named decision-maker in two ambiguous, consequential calls: academic-integrity determinations under AI-detection uncertainty (where faculty senates are writing policy requiring a human instructor, not a detector score, to make the finding), and lab hazard/stop-work authority under the chemical hygiene plan. Both make a specific person own a call that cannot be delegated to software.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Lab-safety liability naming the supervising instructor personally — the trajectory after the UCLA Sangji case, where a PI faced felony charges under Cal/OSHA, and subsequent campus rules assigning documented training-and-supervision duties to a named instructor of record for each lab section. This is a genuine but narrow shield: it covers lab sections, not lecture-only or online teaching, so it cannot lift the whole occupation.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Employers and professional schools treating an ACS-certified degree, or letters of recommendation from a known faculty member with a research relationship, as a filter that AI-completed credentials cannot satisfy — i.e. the premium attaches to human vouching and bench mentorship rather than to lectures. Route is narrow and mostly benefits research-active faculty, not the modal adjunct teaching large intro sections.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "Every lever here protects the wet-lab and research-mentorship tier, which is exactly the tier the modal worker in this SOC — adjunct or non-tenure-track, teaching large intro lecture sections — is least attached to. Enrollment economics and the adjunct labor market cap the realistic ceiling around the mid-60s: no rule requiring a licensed human to sign chemistry instruction exists or is being drafted, and none of these mechanisms creates tenure-line headcount." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 21090, "wage": 77190 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 21370, "wage": 79550 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 21380, "wage": 79550 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 21530, "wage": 80400 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 20260, "wage": 79410 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 20650, "wage": 80720 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 20210, "wage": 85810 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 20390, "wage": 86220 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 19980, "wage": 93250 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -5.3, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "physician-assistants", "title": "Physician Assistants", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 77, "median_wage": 135880, "overlap": 70, "skills_to_close": [ "Operation and Control", "Operations Monitoring", "Service Orientation", "Equipment Maintenance" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }