Postsecondary Teacher

Observed AI exposure for the representative education-faculty occupation is 26.21%, with modeled median job-loss risk at 23.66%. That puts faculty work in a more exposed range than licensed K-12 classroom teaching. AI reaches content prep, quizzes, grading support, tutoring, and course shells directly; advanced mentorship, lab or studio supervision, clinical teaching, and research judgment still require people.

AI support is useful for draft lectures, summaries, reading guides, feedback, rubrics, advising triage, and administrative work. The worker upside is limited because institutions can also standardize courses, reuse shells, raise teaching loads, or shift more work to contingent instructors. The tools help, but colleges can capture much of the productivity gain.

Faculty work is mostly classrooms, offices, online platforms, labs, studios, field sites, and clinical teaching settings. The representative physical data is thin, so the score leans on work-setting evidence: not office-only, but not consistently physical enough to create a high barrier. Discipline-specific lab, clinical, studio, and field work lifts the score above pure desk work.

Postsecondary faculty do not have one uniform state license. The protection comes from accreditation, terminal-degree expectations, professional-program standards, research compliance, student privacy rules, and discipline-specific licenses in some fields. Those rules shape who colleges can hire, but they protect programs and qualifications more than individual teaching seats.

Robotics is not the main threat to faculty work. Teaching, advising, research supervision, studio critique, clinical instruction, and academic judgment do not have a broad robot replacement path. The pressure comes from software, course delivery, staffing models, and enrollment economics rather than physical automation.

Many full-time faculty roles require a doctorate, terminal professional degree, Master of Fine Arts, publication record, clinical expertise, or discipline reputation. That is a deep barrier for entry and advancement. It does not guarantee a stable seat, because adjunct roles can use similar teaching skills without the same security.

The family count used for scoring is large: about 1.72 million jobs, about 136,400 annual openings, and roughly 5.9% projected growth. The public faculty profile a reader can check shows about 1.42 million jobs and about 114,000 openings after excluding career/technical and all-other groups, which still supports the same volume score.

The demand evidence is mixed rather than weak. Replacement hiring, professional programs, health specialties, lab and studio instruction, retirements, and field-specific growth support need. Enrollment cliffs, state funding pressure, adjunct standardization, and AI-supported course delivery keep the demand story from reaching the top band.

Higher education is durable, but it is exposed to enrollment shifts, state funding, tuition pressure, online delivery, adjunct labor, and real-wage drag. A 2015 all-postsecondary median inflated into 2025 dollars is about $87,500, above the 2025 family median of $82,250. That pay pressure matters for a long credential path.