{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/library-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": "Library Science Teachers, Postsecondary", "soc_code": "25-1082", "category": "Education", "us_employment": 3630, "median_annual_wage": 80340 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 40, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 9, "embodiment": 5, "liability_shield": 3, "trust_premium": 13, "judgment_accountability": 10 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Lecturing on MARC/RDA cataloging rules, building reference-interview exercises, and marking annotated bibliographies are all things a model drafts at passable quality, which is why this sits at 9 rather than mid-teens — the residue that genuinely resists is supervising a student's practicum placement in a live special-collections reading room and chairing capstone committees where you judge whether a project is defensible, not whether it is correct.", "embodiment": "A 5 reflects the thin physical layer that still exists: hands-on instruction in archival processing, preservation handling, and physical-collection organization, plus site visits to partner libraries for practicum oversight — but the ALA-accredited MLIS is overwhelmingly delivered online, so most of your teaching week is a screen and a Zoom window.", "liability_shield": "There is no license to teach library science — the MLIS itself is the credential your students seek, not one you must hold to be personally liable, and ALA program accreditation attaches to the institution's self-study and site visit rather than to you as an individual, so no statute names you when a course goes wrong.", "trust_premium": "At 13 the relationship carries real weight because LIS hiring runs on faculty referral networks into academic, public, and archival institutions, and your recommendation letter and professional-association introductions are what actually place a graduate — but you are one of several faculty in a small program, not a sole practitioner students follow by name.", "judgment_accountability": "A 10 rather than mid-teens: you exercise genuine discretion on curriculum mapping to ALA core competencies, admissions decisions, and whether a thesis is ready to defend, but the consequences land on a student's timeline and a program review cycle, not on anyone's safety, liberty, or money." }, "rationale": "The bulk of this job — building syllabi for cataloging and reference courses, recording lecture modules, grading discussion posts and research papers, drafting literature reviews for LIS journals — is text-and-screen work that current models handle at usable quality, and MLIS programs are already among the most online-delivered graduate degrees, which strips away the physical-classroom moat. What persists is thesis and practicum advising, accreditation-facing program design, and the mentorship that pushes students into actual library and archives careers. The bigger threat is demand-side: this is a 3,630-person occupation whose enrollment pipeline depends on library and information-work hiring, and AI pressure on search, cataloging, and reference roles feeds back into program size.", "outlook": "By the mid-2030s expect fewer, larger consolidated MLIS programs with AI-assisted course delivery and a smaller faculty core whose value is advising, accreditation, and employer relationships rather than lecturing.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "ALA Committee on Accreditation's 2025 revision of the Standards for Accreditation of Master's Programs already ties program approval to a named, qualified full-time faculty core (Standard III) and to faculty responsibility for curriculum. If the COA adds explicit language that AI-generated or AI-delivered instruction does not count toward required faculty FTE, and that a named faculty member of record must attest to course design and assessment for each required course, the licensed-human-must-sign element becomes real rather than nominal — most state and municipal librarian civil-service lines require the ALA-accredited degree, so the accreditation signature has teeth.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 5 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "If faculty of record are made individually accountable for academic-integrity determinations on AI-assisted student work (the pattern spreading through university honor-code revisions, where an AI-detection flag cannot itself constitute a finding and a named instructor must make the call), plus signing off on practicum placements and site supervisor evaluations, the role owns more consequential, contestable, appealable calls than it does when grading is the core.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "This occupation does have two genuine tiers: the lecture/rubric/discussion-grading tier and the thesis-and-practicum supervision, accreditation self-study, and IRB-facing research-methods tier. If the routine tier is absorbed and headcount is cut rather than backfilled with more sections, the residual job is disproportionately the supervision-and-self-study tier, which current models cannot carry — writing an ALA self-study that a visiting committee accepts requires standing behind institutional claims.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Narrow but real: employers of archivists and special-collections staff (SAA's Academy of Certified Archivists, and the digital-preservation and rare-books tracks) hire on named-mentor reputation and cohort networks. If iSchools compete on identified faculty and placement pipelines rather than credit-hour price — the way top MLIS programs already market Simmons or UNC faculty by name — students pay for the human relationship, not the content.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 } ], "ceiling_note": "Every lever here raises resistance per remaining job without touching the binding constraint, which is demand-side. A 3,630-person occupation sized by MLIS enrollment, which is sized by library and cataloging hiring, can shrink 30% while each surviving position scores higher. Accreditation moats also protect the program, not the individual line: ALA standards specify faculty adequacy in aggregate, so a department can meet them with fewer, more senior faculty." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 5010, "wage": 70940 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 4650, "wage": 71560 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 4390, "wage": 71410 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 4230, "wage": 71580 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 4330, "wage": 77100 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 4330, "wage": 76370 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 4220, "wage": 80310 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 4100, "wage": 78630 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 3630, "wage": 80340 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -27.5, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "education-teachers-postsecondary", "title": "Education Teachers, Postsecondary", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 50, "median_wage": 75350, "overlap": 91, "skills_to_close": [ "Operations Analysis", "Speaking", "Time Management" ] }, { "slug": "social-work-teachers-postsecondary", "title": "Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 56, "median_wage": 77570, "overlap": 87, "skills_to_close": [ "Operations Analysis", "Instructing", "Science", "Social Perceptiveness" ] }, { "slug": "family-and-consumer-sciences-teachers-postsecondary", "title": "Family and Consumer Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 53, "median_wage": 75870, "overlap": 85, "skills_to_close": [] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }