{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/environmental-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": "Environmental Science Teachers, Postsecondary", "soc_code": "25-1053", "category": "Education", "us_employment": 6690, "median_annual_wage": 94980 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 53, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 11, "embodiment": 11, "liability_shield": 4, "trust_premium": 14, "judgment_accountability": 13 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Roughly half the job — building slide decks on biogeochemical cycles, writing exam banks, grading lab reports against a rubric, and summarizing recent literature for a seminar — is already draftable, but supervising a stream gauging exercise, calibrating a YSI sonde with twenty undergrads in waders, and reading a struggling thesis student's raw data for what they actually did wrong are not, which is what puts this at 11 rather than 6.", "embodiment": "Field methods courses, watershed sampling trips, GC/ICP-MS and wet-chem lab supervision, and the safety judgment calls that go with cold water, ticks, and hazardous reagents are genuinely physical, but the majority of contact hours are still lecture, office hours, and committee rooms — an 11 reflects a real field component that does not dominate the teaching load.", "liability_shield": "There is no licence to teach environmental science; a PhD is a hiring credential, not a statutory gate, and while tenure and accreditation reviews create institutional friction, no board can strip your right to practice, so the 4 comes from the accreditation/HR layer rather than any personal licensure.", "trust_premium": "Graduate advising is the product here — students choose a lab for the advisor, recommendation letters carry your name and reputation with hiring committees, and co-authorship relationships run a decade — which puts this at 14; it is not higher because the large intro-level enrollment that funds the department is largely anonymous seat-time.", "judgment_accountability": "You decide whether a thesis defends, whether a student's field data are clean enough to publish, whether a site is safe to sample, and how to handle authorship disputes and academic-integrity cases — high-stakes, ambiguous, and yours to own — with 13 rather than 16 because departmental curriculum committees, IRB, and deans formally share the heaviest of those calls." }, "rationale": "Lecture slides, syllabi, problem sets, rubric-based grading of lab reports, and literature reviews for grant proposals are all things current models draft at usable quality, and enrollment pressure in a small field (6,690 jobs) makes course consolidation into shared or asynchronous sections a real threat. What holds is the embodied and accountable part: running field sampling trips and wet labs, mentoring graduate researchers, sitting on IRB/thesis committees, and signing off on data and publications under your own name. The modal worker here is a tenure-track or contingent faculty member whose survival depends more on institutional budgets and enrollment than on model capability.", "outlook": "The job persists but thins: content delivery gets AI-assisted and consolidated across sections, while faculty who run field programs and funded labs keep their seats.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Accreditation or program-review language that ties environmental science degree approval to a minimum number of supervised field/wet-lab contact hours (as ABET-accredited environmental engineering programs already specify laboratory experience) — making the instructor-led field sampling trip, boat/electrofishing safety supervision, and instrument-calibration lab non-substitutable by asynchronous delivery", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift: once slide decks, problem sets, and rubric grading are conceded to models, the remaining tier is grad-student research mentoring, field method design, and thesis committee work. The field genuinely has these two tiers, so if institutions formally reassign the routine tier to shared/AI-assisted asynchronous sections while keeping named faculty on research supervision, the residual job is the judgment tier", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Named-author and data-integrity obligations tightening: NSF/NIH research-misconduct rules and journal policies (e.g. ICMJE-style authorship, Nature/Science AI-authorship bans) put the PI personally on the hook for data provenance and for whether AI-generated text or analysis entered a submission. Institutional research-integrity offices adding AI-disclosure attestations signed by the supervising faculty member raises this further", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Field-course risk management: campus risk-management and insurer requirements for off-campus field trips (wilderness first aid certification, named trip leader on the liability waiver, water-safety credentials) create a documented individual signatory for student safety. Narrow, and only applies to faculty who actually run field courses", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "State licensure pipelines: if more states follow the pattern of licensed Professional Geologist / environmental professional boards in requiring coursework taught by qualified faculty at accredited institutions for exam eligibility, employers and students pay for the credential chain rather than the content — but this is weak for environmental science specifically, which lacks a single dominant license", "plausibility": "unlikely", "would_add": 1 } ], "ceiling_note": "The binding constraint here is not model capability but enrollment and budget. A 6,690-job field faces course consolidation and contingent-hiring decisions made by deans, and no liability or accountability lever protects a section that gets merged or an adjunct line that isn't renewed. Realistic ceiling is low-to-mid 60s, and even that mostly protects tenured faculty who run field programs and supervise graduate researchers — not the contingent lecturer teaching intro sections." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 5990, "wage": 76360 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 6040, "wage": 79910 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 6060, "wage": 82430 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 5860, "wage": 84740 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 5440, "wage": 81980 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 6240, "wage": 83040 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 7120, "wage": 88410 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 7130, "wage": 87710 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 6690, "wage": 94980 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 11.7, "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": 75, "skills_to_close": [ "Time Management", "Judgment and Decision Making", "Equipment Maintenance", "Equipment Selection" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }