EXPOSED
The modal worker here is a dean, registrar, admissions director, or student-affairs director, and a large slice of the day is document and data work AI now handles competently: drafting accreditation self-studies, summarizing enrollment and retention dashboards, screening applications, writing policy language, and generating catalog and scheduling text. What does not automate is the accountability layer — chairing a tenure or discipline case, negotiating budget cuts with faculty senate, handling a Title IX or crisis incident, and standing in front of parents, trustees, and regulators to own the call. No personal license is required, so the protection is institutional politics and human accountability rather than regulation, and administrative bloat is a standing budget target.
Headcount grew steadily across the period.
Median pay $95,410 → $104,590 -12.3% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+1.7%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 180,470 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +1.7% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 50/100 the work is only partly exposed — some tasks are automatable, the core of the job is not. Nothing here is in tension.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~15,100 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
DeanProvostRegistrarChancellorCommandantCampus DeanCollege DeanFaculty DeanStudent DeanAcademic DeanBusiness DeanEducation DeanAdmissions DeanCampus DirectorUniversity DeanInstruction DeanTesting DirectorCollege PresidentCollege RegistrarDivision DirectorResearch DirectorStudent Life DeanCampus CoordinatorEducation Director
Holding it up: judgment & accountability . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier An 11 reflects the split inside a single week: the enrollment funnel reports, transfer-credit equivalency checks, catalog copy, degree-audit exception logs, and the first draft of an accreditation self-study narrative are all machine-drafted now, while the faculty senate negotiation, the tenure dossier meeting, and the 11pm call about a student in crisis are not — that is a genuine half-and-half, not a role whose core survives.
Some physical or field component A 6 covers the fact that most of the job runs from an office and a Zoom window, but commencement, orientation, campus tours, residence-hall walkthroughs after an incident, board retreats, and recruitment travel to high schools and college fairs put you physically in rooms where your presence is the point.
Certification preferred, not legally required A 5 rather than a 0 is because the role carries named institutional obligations — Clery Act reporting, Title IX coordinator or deputy designation, FERPA custodianship, SEVIS signatures for a DSO — and credentials like AACRAO or NASPA training are common, but none of that is a personal license a state board can revoke, so the institution absorbs the exposure and you can be replaced without a licensure gap.
Exists to be accountable for ambiguous calls A 15 is earned by calls with no procedure to hide behind: whether a Title IX finding warrants expulsion, whether to close campus during a threat, which program to eliminate and which faculty lines go with it, whether to grant a medical withdrawal that costs the institution tuition — and your name is on the memo when the trustees or a plaintiff's attorney reads it back.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (11/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (5/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (13/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (15/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 33 of this occupation's 50 points (66%).
Embodiment (6/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 62/100, still EXPOSED.
Post-2024 campus-protest and Title VI enforcement wave plus congressional testimony precedent has made discipline, speech, and safety calls career-ending and individually attributable; if state open-records or consent-decree settlements require the deciding administrator to be named in written findings, ownership of ambiguous calls hardens further.
Genuine two-tier job: if AI absorbs the catalog, dashboard, scheduling, and self-study drafting tier, the surviving role is hearing-chairing, faculty-senate and union negotiation, and crisis command — but note this shrinks headcount rather than protecting it, and shows up as fewer positions with higher scores.
Federal or state rules naming a specific institutional officer as personally accountable for compliance determinations — e.g. the Clery Act 'Campus Safety Survey Administrator' and Title IX Coordinator roles being extended by ED rulemaking or state law to require a named, signed human certification that AI-generated findings were independently reviewed; similarly a designated certifying officer for Title IV/FAFSA and SEVIS/DSO attestations (DSO signature already legally personal for I-20s). Accreditor standards (SACSCOC, WSCUC) requiring a named officer to attest self-studies were not machine-generated would push the same way.
Narrow route only: enrollment-management and admissions where families and boards demand a human read of holistic files — visible in institutions publicly pledging no AI-only admissions decisions and in state bills (e.g. proposals restricting automated decision systems in education) requiring human review of adverse decisions.
The limit. No personal license exists or is likely for deans and registrars, so liability_shield is capped around 9-10 via role-designation rules rather than licensure. Budget pressure works the other direction: administrative headcount is the standing cut target, so scores can rise while jobs disappear.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 7,550 | $137,800 +32% |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 6,770 | $131,130 +25% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 6,270 | $101,070 -3% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 6,050 | $125,230 +20% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 4,330 | $117,980 +13% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 4,200 | $125,460 +20% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 3,390 | $102,990 -2% |
| Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX | 3,270 | $125,190 +20% |
| Augusta-Richmond County, GA-SC | 190 | $177,150 +69% |
| Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA | 50 | $172,410 +65% |
| Binghamton, NY | 60 | $166,660 +59% |
The University of Washington said it will use AI and automation as part of an administrative restructuring, with specifics not yet disclosed, according to the Daily UW.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.