{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/postsecondary-teachers-all-other/",
  "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": "Postsecondary Teachers, All Other",
    "soc_code": "25-1199",
    "category": "Education",
    "us_employment": 149840,
    "median_annual_wage": 77640
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 46,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 10,
    "embodiment": 9,
    "liability_shield": 3,
    "trust_premium": 14,
    "judgment_accountability": 10
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Lecture prep, quiz banks, and rubric-scored essay feedback — the bulk of a 3/3 or 4/4 load — are already drafted competently by a model, but running a live seminar discussion, reading when a room has lost the thread, and calibrating a cohort's midterm results into next week's plan still require a person in the room, which is what keeps this at 10 rather than down in the automatable band.",
    "embodiment": "Teaching bodies are in physical classrooms — proctoring exams, running a lab or studio section, holding in-person office hours, moving between campuses on adjunct schedules — but the environment is a controlled, scheduled room with predictable equipment, so this sits at 9 rather than in the field-work range where conditions are uncontrolled.",
    "liability_shield": "No state license, board exam, or continuing-education requirement gates who teaches an interdisciplinary or general-studies course; the institution's accreditation and the department chair carry the credentialing weight, and adjunct appointments are frequently made on a master's degree plus a semester-by-semester contract, which is why this is a 3 and not a 0 — degree requirements exist, they just protect nobody's job.",
    "trust_premium": "Students choose sections by instructor name, come back for letters of recommendation and thesis advising, and the mentorship a first-generation student gets in office hours is a substantial part of what tuition buys — that relational core puts this at 14, though it stops short of the high teens because large gen-ed sections and high adjunct turnover mean many students never form the bond at all.",
    "judgment_accountability": "You decide what counts as evidence in a paper, whether a plagiarism case goes to the academic integrity board, whether a struggling student gets an incomplete or a failing grade that affects their aid eligibility — real discretion with consequences, but bounded by department-approved learning outcomes, appeal processes, and grade-distribution norms, which holds it at 10 rather than the ownership-of-ambiguity band."
  },
  "rationale": "This is a catch-all bucket for college instructors outside the named disciplines — the modal worker builds syllabi, delivers lectures, grades written work, and advises students, often off the tenure track. Slide decks, lecture outlines, quiz banks, rubric-based grading, and feedback drafts are already competently generated by AI, and no license protects the role; what holds is live classroom presence, mentorship students actually pay tuition for, and accountability for what a cohort learns. The real threat is institutional: enrollment pressure plus AI-assisted course production shrinks section counts and consolidates adjunct lines faster than it eliminates the job outright.",
  "outlook": "Course content production largely automates and section counts consolidate, but instructors who anchor labs, studios, and mentorship keep work; adjunct-heavy lecture-only lines thin out first.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Accreditor rules that make a named, credentialed instructor of record legally responsible for AI-generated course content and grades — e.g. SACSCOC/HLC 'faculty of record' and regular-and-substantive-interaction (RSI) standards under the Department of Education's distance-education rules being enforced against AI-taught sections, so an institution loses Title IV eligibility if no human faculty member owns the course. State authorization audits citing RSI violations for AI-delivered courses would be the checkable event.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 5
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Collective bargaining language (already appearing in CFA, PSC-CUNY, and Rutgers AAUP-AFT contracts and the 2023 WGA-style AI clauses) requiring that AI cannot be the instructor of record, that course materials authored by faculty cannot be used to train or generate replacement sections without consent, and that section caps not be raised on the basis of AI assistance. This is contractual rather than licensure, but functions as a shield on displacement.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Academic integrity regimes that put the instructor personally on the hook for AI-misconduct determinations — where a faculty member must make and defend a finding that carries a student's degree, subject to due-process appeal and litigation (students have already sued over AI-detector accusations). If institutional policy formally assigns that adjudication to the instructor rather than a central office, the consequential-call weight rises.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift: if lecture production, quiz banks, and first-pass feedback are fully automated, the residual role is oral examination, studio/seminar facilitation, live assessment designed to be AI-resistant, and individualized mentoring. Watch for institutions formally redesigning assessment toward proctored oral defenses and in-person performance — that raises the share of the day AI cannot do, even as headcount falls.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Enrollment-marketing shift where selective institutions advertise guaranteed human-taught small sections and faculty-student ratios as the differentiator against low-cost AI-delivered competitors, with tuition tiers to match. Checkable if catalogs or state disclosure rules require labeling which sections are AI-delivered.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "The binding constraint is budgetary, not technical: no lever here stops section consolidation or adjunct non-renewal, and every gain above is institution-dependent rather than licensure-backed. Absent a real credential monopoly, liability_shield has a low ceiling and headcount can fall even as the remaining job gets harder to automate."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 189270,
        "wage": 64480
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 183750,
        "wage": 65660
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 201320,
        "wage": 68970
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 194740,
        "wage": 71950
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 199020,
        "wage": 78160
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 214520,
        "wage": 76920
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 166980,
        "wage": 79870
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 151530,
        "wage": 78490
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 149840,
        "wage": 77640
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": -20.8,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}