{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/family-and-consumer-sciences-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": "Family and Consumer Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary", "soc_code": "25-1192", "category": "Education", "us_employment": 2770, "median_annual_wage": 75870 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 53, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 11, "embodiment": 12, "liability_shield": 4, "trust_premium": 15, "judgment_accountability": 11 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "An 11 reflects the split inside a single course: the nutrition-science lecture, the reading list, the rubric, and the online discussion prompts can be generated and graded by a model today, but nobody can watch a student debone a chicken, judge whether a seam allowance is even, or catch a food-safety violation at a steam table through a screen — and that lab tier is roughly half the contact hours in foods, textiles, and child-development practica.", "embodiment": "At 12 you are in a test kitchen with commercial ranges and a serving line, at sewing and pressing stations, and out doing site visits to childcare centers and dietetics placements — real physical presence in spaces you don't control — but you are not scoring higher because the semester still runs on a classroom, an LMS gradebook, and department meetings rather than continuous fieldwork.", "liability_shield": "A 4 is right because a postsecondary teaching appointment requires no practice licence: the master's or doctorate and any ServSafe or RD credential you hold are hiring criteria and program-accreditation inputs (AAFCS, ACEND), not a legal barrier — the institution carries the liability for what happens in your lab, and an adjunct with a different credential mix can be hired into your section next term.", "trust_premium": "15 is earned in the practicum and advising relationship — you are the one who signs off that a student is ready to stand in front of preschoolers or in a hospital diet office, you write the reference that placement supervisors actually read, and you know which student panics under a timed lab — but it stops short of the top band because students enroll for the degree and the licensure pathway, and the course is often filled by whichever faculty member is assigned it.", "judgment_accountability": "11 covers calls that are genuinely yours and genuinely contested — failing a student on professional conduct at a childcare site, deciding whether a food-safety lapse is teachable or removable, handling a mandated-reporter disclosure that surfaces in a child-development practicum — but curriculum content, competency lists, and grade appeals are bounded by accreditor standards and departmental policy rather than left to you." }, "rationale": "Much of this job — writing lecture slides, building syllabi, drafting quiz banks, grading short-answer work, summarizing nutrition or child-development literature — is already within reach of current AI. What holds is the hands-on tier: supervising foods labs and test kitchens, teaching sewing and textiles technique, running practicum placements in childcare centers and dietetics sites, and evaluating student performance in person. The bigger threat to this small occupation (about 2,800 jobs) is program consolidation and adjunctification, not a model replacing the instructor.", "outlook": "The instructor role persists because labs and practicum supervision need a body in the room, but course-content preparation collapses in value and departments will run leaner with more adjuncts.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Accreditation-driven expansion of supervised lab/practicum hours — e.g. ACEND's dietetics standards requiring documented in-person competency verification of food-production skills, and NAEYC-accredited child development programs requiring on-site practicum observation by qualified faculty — pushes the job's center of gravity toward test-kitchen and placement supervision that cannot be done remotely or by a model", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Faculty of record designated as the credentialed supervisor-of-record for students in externship sites: ACEND preceptor/program-director qualification rules and state childcare licensing rules that name a specific qualified individual responsible for students working with minors or preparing food for the public. Also RD/RDN licensure in the ~30 states with dietetics practice acts, where instruction bleeding into individualized nutrition counseling requires a licensed human", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Task-mix shift: if slide decks, quiz banks and literature summaries are automated, what remains is the consequential-call tier — signing off that a student is competent to handle food safely or be placed with children, removing a student from a practicum, and mandated-reporter judgments arising from placement supervision. Formalized competency-gate sign-offs in accreditation self-studies make this ownership explicit", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Same two-tier shift: the residual job becomes lab safety management, technique correction by hand, and individualized remediation. This raises the score only if institutions retain the lab courses rather than converting the program to online general-education nutrition surveys — the more likely path for a 2,800-job occupation under consolidation pressure", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "The binding constraint is enrollment and program survival, not capability. FCS departments are being merged into nutrition, education, or hospitality units and taught by adjuncts; a higher per-role resistance score does not protect the headcount. Trust premium has no realistic route upward — students and accreditors buy the credential and the required contact hours, not this specific instructor." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2019, "emp": 2150, "wage": 76480 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 2270, "wage": 72220 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 2730, "wage": 79630 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 2420, "wage": 76440 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 2660, "wage": 78410 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 2630, "wage": 77280 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 2770, "wage": 75870 } ], "from": 2019, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 28.8, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": false }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "special-education-teachers-secondary-school", "title": "Special Education Teachers, Secondary School", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 73, "median_wage": 74260, "overlap": 84, "skills_to_close": [ "Service Orientation", "Coordination", "Social Perceptiveness", "Time Management" ] }, { "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": 81, "skills_to_close": [ "Social Perceptiveness", "Coordination", "Judgment and Decision Making", "Negotiation" ] }, { "slug": "nursing-instructors-and-teachers-postsecondary", "title": "Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 71, "median_wage": 80250, "overlap": 78, "skills_to_close": [ "Judgment and Decision Making", "Coordination", "Science", "Social Perceptiveness" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }