{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/forestry-and-conservation-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": "Forestry and Conservation Science Teachers, Postsecondary", "soc_code": "25-1043", "category": "Education", "us_employment": 1520, "median_annual_wage": 101420 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 58, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 12, "embodiment": 14, "liability_shield": 3, "trust_premium": 15, "judgment_accountability": 14 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "The seated half of the job — lecture prep, syllabus drafting, quiz banks, literature reviews, extension bulletins — is squarely within what a model does now, but the summer field camps, tree-ID and cruising labs, and semester-long capstone stand-inventory projects still have to be designed, run and assessed on site, which keeps this at 12 rather than the 7-8 of a lecture-only discipline.", "embodiment": "Field camp puts you on uneven terrain with chainsaws, drip torches, increment borers and student crews in heat, ticks and standing dead timber — uncontrolled forest, not a teaching lab bench — and 14 rather than 18 only because a real share of the contact hours are still classroom, GIS lab and office.", "liability_shield": "No licence gates who teaches forestry: the institution's HR requirements and accreditation (SAF program recognition) attach to the department, not to you personally, so even the Certified Forester or RPF credential many faculty hold is a professional nicety here rather than a legal barrier to your replacement — 3 reflects that burn-boss or pesticide-applicator certifications occasionally sit on individual faculty.", "trust_premium": "Graduate students choose this program because of a named advisor's research on a specific forest type, and the multi-year thesis-committee, letter-of-recommendation and industry-placement relationship is not transferable to a substitute — 15 rather than 18 because the intro service courses that carry most of the enrollment headcount are anonymous to the student.", "judgment_accountability": "You call whether a prescribed burn goes ahead with 20 undergraduates on the fireline, whether a thesis is defensible, and whether a graduate is competent to sign off on a stand prescription — those are unshareable calls with real consequences, and 14 not 18 because promotion, curriculum and safety decisions ultimately pass through department and IRB/EHS review." }, "rationale": "Lecture slides, syllabi, quiz banks, literature reviews and grant boilerplate are already drafted competently by AI, and much of the grading load for written work is automatable. What holds is the field component this discipline is built on — timber cruising, plot sampling, GPS and dendrometer work, prescribed-burn and silviculture labs, safety supervision in actual forests — plus thesis advising, defense committees, and accountability for whether a graduate can run a stand inventory correctly. The real threat here is enrollment economics and adjunctification in a 1,500-person occupation, not a model replacing the instructor in the woods.", "outlook": "The teaching-content half of this job gets cheap and partly automated, while field labs, advising and applied research keep the position alive — expect fewer tenure lines, more grant-and-extension-funded hybrids, and heavier reliance on who can run students safely in the woods.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "SAF (Society of American Foresters) accreditation standards specifying minimum contact hours of instructor-supervised field labs — cruising, plot sampling, prescribed burn — that cannot be met by simulation or online delivery; SAF already audits field-skills coverage in its program accreditation reviews, and tightening the field-hours language would hard-wire an in-woods instructor per cohort", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "State forestry board or campus risk-management rule requiring a named, certified burn boss / qualified wildland fire supervisor (NWCG-qualified) of record for any student prescribed-burn or chainsaw lab, with personal certification at stake — mirroring how state burn-permit regimes already name an individual burn boss. This converts a teaching role into a signing role for the highest-risk labs", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 5 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Campus insurer conditions coverage for student field trips involving felling, ATVs, or fire on documented instructor-of-record supervision ratios; already a visible trend in university field-course risk policies post-incident", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift: this discipline genuinely has two tiers. If lecture prep, quiz banks, literature reviews and written-work grading are absorbed, the residual role is field instruction, calibration of student measurements against ground truth, thesis committee work, and licensure-exam/certification readiness — pushing the measured resistance of the remaining day upward without any new law", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Formal instructor sign-off tied to a credential a student carries into practice — e.g. Certified Forester eligibility, state registered-forester licensure (present in California, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Maine, etc.) requiring named faculty attestation of field competency rather than transcript credit alone", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 } ], "ceiling_note": "Nothing here touches the actual binding constraint: 1,520 workers in a discipline whose enrollment is flat-to-declining. Every lever above raises the value of the instructor who remains while the number of lines funded keeps shrinking, and adjunctification strips exactly the liability-of-record and committee-accountability roles that would otherwise score. Trust premium has no realistic route up — students and legislatures pay for the credential and the field hours, not for the specific human lecturing." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 2000, "wage": 87420 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 2070, "wage": 86900 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 1770, "wage": 85450 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 1460, "wage": 87400 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 1180, "wage": 82330 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 1270, "wage": 96500 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 1260, "wage": 101650 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 1310, "wage": 100830 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 1520, "wage": 101420 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -24, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }