Make History Your Field

A history degree teaches you to work the way historians work, and most of that work is handling primary sources:

• You learn to find the evidence people left behind, which means letters, diaries, court filings, census records, old newspapers, photographs and government documents.
• You learn to interrogate it. Who made this, for whom, and what were they trying to achieve? A source is never neutral, and working out its angle is half the discipline.
• You learn to build an argument from it and write it up so that somebody else can check your reasoning. That last part is what employers outside the field end up paying for.

Our directory tracks 2,499 history programs at 1,195 US colleges and universities, from four-year bachelor’s degrees through to the doctorate (a snapshot, not a census, since programs open and close every year). Start with the complete guide to history degrees if you are still deciding which level you need.

Where a History Degree Actually Leads

The teaching stereotype undersells the degree badly. The American Historical Association finds that only about 20% of history majors work in education, which leaves four fifths of them somewhere else entirely: law, government, business, publishing, archives and research among them.

A few places history graduates end up that people rarely predict:

• Law school, where the reading load and the argument-from-evidence habit transfer almost directly
• Federal and state government, including the intelligence and foreign service side
• Museums, archives and historic preservation offices
• Corporate research, consulting and anywhere that rewards writing clearly under deadline

The pay follows an unusual curve. It’s worth understanding before you enroll, because the first number you see will not be the one that matters. History graduates start modestly and climb: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York puts the median wage at $47,500 in early career and $80,000 by mid-career. The AHA estimates median lifetime earnings for history bachelor’s holders at around $1.3 million. Our degree guides offer an honest look at whether a history degree is worth it by covering the other side of that picture, including the underemployment rate, which is real.

How the Field Is Changing

History is not a static discipline, whatever its subject matter. Two shifts are worth knowing about if you are choosing a program now.

The first is digital. Text mining, mapping, network analysis and database work have moved from novelty to standard equipment in graduate programs. A history student who can also handle data is in an unusually strong position, and that combination is still rare. The second is applied. Public history is the branch that works in museums, archives, preservation offices and government agencies rather than in classrooms. It has grown into a career track of its own, with its own degrees, and our directory now flags 149 programs carrying the designation.

If either direction appeals, look for it explicitly in the curriculum instead of assuming it is there. Departments vary enormously on both.