{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/psychology-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": "Psychology Teachers, Postsecondary", "soc_code": "25-1066", "category": "Education", "us_employment": 41530, "median_annual_wage": 80340 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 46, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 9, "embodiment": 8, "liability_shield": 5, "trust_premium": 14, "judgment_accountability": 10 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Roughly half the load — 200-seat Intro Psych lectures on classical conditioning, multiple-choice item banks, textbook-aligned slide decks, rubric-scored essays on the Milgram studies — is standardized content a model reproduces at passing quality, while the surviving half (running a live seminar where students argue about replication failures, sitting with an undergrad thesis student through IRB revisions, calibrating a practicum evaluation) still requires a present human, which is why this lands at 9 rather than in the resistant teens.", "embodiment": "Teaching happens in a physical room on a fixed schedule with office hours, proctored exams, and hands-on rat/human-subject labs or EEG and eye-tracking demos in some programs, but nothing here is manual work in an uncontrolled setting — the 8 reflects place-bound presence, not physical skill, and the growing share of asynchronous online sections pulls it no higher.", "liability_shield": "A PhD or master's plus regional accreditation and departmental hiring standards is the whole gate — no state board licenses postsecondary psychology instruction, no one revokes a credential over a bad lecture, and the 5 rather than 0 is earned only by HLC/SACSCOC faculty-qualification rules and, for those supervising clinical practica, APA program accreditation standards that require credentialed supervisors.", "trust_premium": "The 14 is doing real work: students choose sections by instructor, letters of recommendation for grad school are only worth what your name and specific knowledge of that student are worth, mentorship on an honors thesis is a two-year relationship, and disclosures in office hours about depression or assault go to a person the student has decided to trust — none of that transfers to a shared course shell.", "judgment_accountability": "Grade appeals, academic-integrity referrals, deciding whether a student's disclosure triggers a Title IX or care-team report, and judging when an undergraduate protocol crosses into human-subjects risk are consequential calls, but they run through university procedures, appeals committees, and IRB review rather than resting on the instructor alone — hence 10, not the high-teens of someone who owns the final unappealable decision." }, "rationale": "Most of the workweek — building Intro Psych lecture decks, writing quiz banks, summarizing literature, grading short-answer and essay responses, drafting feedback — is exactly what language models now do at usable quality, and enrollment-driven institutions are already consolidating large gateway sections around shared AI-assisted content. What survives is live seminar facilitation, supervising undergrad research and IRB protocols, clinical/practicum mentoring, and being the person a struggling 19-year-old actually talks to. The modal worker here is not a tenured researcher but a full-time instructor or adjunct teaching high-volume intro sections, which is the most exposed tier; there is no license, only credential and accreditation requirements.", "outlook": "Expect fewer, larger intro sections with AI-assisted content and grading, while jobs concentrate in research supervision, practicum, and advising-heavy roles.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Accreditor or state authorization rules that make a credentialed faculty member of record personally accountable for assessment integrity and grade assignment — e.g. SACSCOC/HLC 'faculty qualifications and responsibility for curriculum' standards being enforced against AI-generated course content, or state distance-ed rules barring AI-only instruction of record. Also APA-accredited program requirements that clinical/practicum supervision hours be signed by a licensed psychologist, which already binds the supervision-heavy slice of this SOC.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift: if intro-section deck building, quiz banks and first-pass essay grading are fully absorbed by institutional AI, the residual job is IRB protocol review, undergrad thesis supervision, live seminar facilitation and oral/defense assessment — genuinely a second tier here. Reinforced if institutions respond to AI-written student work by moving to oral exams, in-class proctored work and supervised research, all human-invigilated.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Formal ownership of consequential calls: named-instructor responsibility in academic-integrity hearings over AI use, Title IX/mandatory-reporter duties, and CARE-team referral of students disclosing suicidality in class — plus IRB member/protocol-advisor sign-off on undergraduate human-subjects research.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Small-college and honors-program marketing that contractually caps section size and guarantees human-taught seminars, and faculty-union contract language limiting class size or barring AI as instructor of record (already bargained by CFA, Rutgers AAUP-AFT and several CC locals).", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 } ], "ceiling_note": "Ceiling is low for the modal worker: the adjunct teaching 300-seat online Intro Psych captures almost none of these levers, since supervision, IRB and seminar work concentrate in tenure-line and clinical faculty. Enrollment economics push the other way, and no licensure exists to anchor a shield." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 37090, "wage": 73770 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 37630, "wage": 76710 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 37480, "wage": 76620 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 36520, "wage": 78180 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 36060, "wage": 77860 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 40050, "wage": 78810 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 40610, "wage": 82140 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 41610, "wage": 80330 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 41530, "wage": 80340 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 12, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "social-work-teachers-postsecondary", "title": "Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 56, "median_wage": 77570, "overlap": 90, "skills_to_close": [ "Instructing", "Speaking" ] }, { "slug": "nursing-instructors-and-teachers-postsecondary", "title": "Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 71, "median_wage": 80250, "overlap": 86, "skills_to_close": [ "Troubleshooting", "Coordination", "Operations Monitoring", "Quality Control Analysis" ] }, { "slug": "clinical-and-counseling-psychologists", "title": "Clinical and Counseling Psychologists", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 71, "median_wage": 100580, "overlap": 82, "skills_to_close": [ "Persuasion", "Service Orientation", "Reading Comprehension", "Social Perceptiveness" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }