History Degrees in Wisconsin

On the evening of July 12, 1893, at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, a young University of Wisconsin professor named Frederick Jackson Turner read a paper called “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” His argument was that American democracy was made on the frontier instead of inherited from Europe. It became the dominant reading of American history for more than half a century, and historians have been qualifying, attacking, and rebuilding it ever since. Whether or not Turner was right is beside the point for a prospective student. What matters is that the argument came out of Wisconsin and never really stopped. The universities that started it still carry most of the subject in the state.

Wisconsin has 24 colleges and universities offering history degrees, with 41 programs among them: 29 bachelor’s degrees, 8 master’s degrees, and 4 doctorates.

Two schools carry the subject at all three levels, and both are University of Wisconsin campuses.

Top History Schools in Wisconsin

We scored all 24 Wisconsin schools on the four factors we use in every state: history degree offerings and program variety (40%), student outcomes (25%), reputation (20%), and affordability (15%). Madison leads on depth at 7 programs, with Milwaukee at 5 and Eau Claire at 4. Outcomes go to Madison at 90% and Marquette at 83% completing in four years. Reputation rests on the two R1 campuses, Madison and Milwaukee. Affordability is what keeps the smaller public universities in contention and what pushes Marquette down the list despite a strong completion rate. Here are Wisconsin’s best history degrees.

Most Affordable History Degrees in Wisconsin

Most affordable history degrees in Wisconsin

Rank	School	Program	Tuition per year
1	University of Wisconsin-Parkside	B.A. in History	$8,270
2	University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh	Bachelor's in History	$8,532
3	University of Wisconsin-Whitewater	B.A. or B.S. in Public History	$8,616
4	University of Wisconsin-Platteville	B.A. in History	$8,644
5	University of Wisconsin-Green Bay	Bachelor's in History	$8,700
6	University of Wisconsin-Superior	B.A. in History	$8,812
7	University of Wisconsin-River Falls	Bachelor's in History	$9,008
8	University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point	B.A. in History and Social Studies Education	$9,488
9	University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire	Bachelor's in History	$9,642
10	University of Wisconsin-La Crosse	B.A. in History	$10,070

Annual in-state tuition and fees. Every school on this list is a University of Wisconsin campus, running from $8,270 to $10,070. Two of them also appear in our ranking above.

History Education in Wisconsin

Wisconsin’s history offering is a University of Wisconsin story almost from end to end. Every school on the affordability list is a UW campus, all ten priced between $8,270 and $10,070, and four of the five schools in our ranking are too. The state splits evenly by institution count, twelve public and twelve private, but not by provision: the publics run 26 programs to the privates’ 14 and hold all four doctorates. Marquette at $51,170 is the only private university that reaches the ranking at all.

Graduate work concentrates tightly. Two campuses teach history at all three levels, Madison and Milwaukee, and between them they hold all four of the state’s doctorates. Madison alone accounts for three of those, running history, art history, and the history of science, medicine, and technology as separate doctoral fields.

That last one is worth pausing on. The history of science and technology is a genuine specialty, and Wisconsin is one of a small group of places that treats it as a degree in its own right, not a research interest inside a general department. Georgia Tech, Oregon State, and Pittsburgh run comparable programs, so a student committed to this field has a handful of serious options nationally and Madison is among them.

Applied work sits mostly outside Madison. Milwaukee runs an M.A. in Public History and Eau Claire runs public history at both bachelor’s and master’s level, which gives the state three public history programs across two campuses at public tuition.

Transfer in Wisconsin is unusually generous in scale. The Universal Credit Transfer Agreement between the UW System and the Wisconsin Technical College System lets students moving from a technical college liberal arts or collegiate transfer program bring up to 72 credits into a UW institution. For comparison, most statewide general education blocks run somewhere between 30 and 42 credits, so this is roughly double the usual figure, though it works differently: it covers a full transfer program rather than a general education core. The agreement is reviewed and renewed annually, so confirm the current course sets with the University of Wisconsin System.

Online provision is modest at 4 programs, three bachelor’s and one master’s, with Madison and Milwaukee each running one. Our guide to online history degrees covers the wider field.

Becoming a History Teacher in Wisconsin

Wisconsin gives you a choice most states do not. The Department of Public Instruction issues a Broad Field Social Studies license and, separately, a History license of its own, covering the EA-A range for ages 10 to 21.

That matters when you are choosing a degree. A history major maps cleanly onto the history license, while the broad-field credential requires coursework across geography, economics, and political science and makes you employable across a whole department. In a small district the broad field version is often the more practical qualification; in a large high school with a full social studies faculty, the subject license may be enough.

Wisconsin also runs a content test pathway, which lets an already-licensed social studies teacher add further subject areas by passing a content examination instead of returning for more coursework. A Praxis content test is required for most subjects.

Stevens Point builds the classroom route directly into the degree with a B.A. in History and Social Studies Education.

Confirm current requirements with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction before choosing a program.

History Careers in Wisconsin

History Careers in Wisconsin

Occupation	Wisconsin jobs	Wisconsin median	vs. U.S. median
Secondary school teachers	15,910	$62,870	-13%
Postsecondary history teachers	370	$81,380	-3%
Curators	300	$64,370	+1%
Archivists	220	$59,400	-8%
Historians	50	$45,810	-40%

Employment and wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, 2025.

The spread in this table is the widest of any state on this site, and it runs from one genuinely good number to one genuinely bad one.

Curators are the good number. At 1% above the national median across 300 positions, Wisconsin is one of the few states that pays museum collections work at or above the national rate. Postsecondary history teaching is close behind at 3% below.

Historians are the bad number, and it is severe. A median of $45,810 is 40% below the national figure, which is among the steepest shortfalls anywhere in the country, across just 50 positions. Two occupations that sound adjacent are separated here by the gap between $64,370 and $45,810.

The practical reading is that Wisconsin supports museum and archival work reasonably well and the job title “historian” poorly, so what you call the role matters as much as the training behind it. Secondary school teaching, 13% below national across 15,910 positions, remains where the volume is.

History Resources in Wisconsin

• Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison. Founded in 1846 and chartered in 1853, it is the oldest historical society in the United States to receive continuous public funding. Its headquarters, completed in 1900, sit on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, and its collection of historic newspapers is second only to the Library of Congress. For a student at Madison, that is a national-scale research collection on the same campus as the department.
• Wisconsin Historical Society Library and Archives, in the same building, holding the state’s history library alongside its archival collections.

Frequently Asked Questions