Master's Degrees in History

A master’s in history is a graduate degree, usually a Master of Arts, that moves you from studying the past to producing original scholarship about it. Students typically enter with a bachelor’s in history or a related field and leave with a thesis or major research project to their name. This guide covers what an MA in history involves, what it costs, where to earn one, and the careers it actually opens.

What Is a Master’s in History?

The core difference from undergraduate study is the direction of the work. A bachelor’s student mostly learns history others have written; a master’s student starts producing it, in seminars built around debate over sources and interpretation instead of lectures. Graduate programs also expect you to master historiography, meaning the running argument among historians about how the past should be read, not just what happened.

Programs state these goals plainly. Graduate learning outcomes published by programs such as Washington State University’s, which align with American Historical Association standards, expect a master’s graduate to be able to:

• command the methods and major debates of a historical field;
• design and complete an independent research project from primary sources;
• write to a professional standard, in the field’s formats: conference papers, book reviews, journal-style articles;
• produce a thesis that meets national standards;
• teach history at the college level.

What that looks like in practice is concrete. One master’s student in Florida State University’s history program, profiled by the department, paired a major field in U.S. history with a minor field in public history and wrote a thesis on the Henry Wirz monument at Andersonville, Georgia, tracing the contested 1909 fight over where it would stand and what it would say. That is the shape of an MA: a defined field, a narrow question, and an original answer argued from the records.

Master’s in History Requirements

Admission is less mechanical than undergraduate admissions and turns on evidence you can do research. Programs typically ask for:

• a bachelor’s degree, in history or an adjacent field such as English, political science, or anthropology;
• a writing sample, ideally a research paper built on primary sources;
• a statement of purpose naming the field you want to work in, and letters of recommendation;
• GRE scores at some programs, though many have dropped the requirement.

Once enrolled, coursework runs through graduate seminars and a methods sequence, and many programs require reading knowledge of a second language, especially for fields outside U.S. history. The endpoint splits into two tracks. Thesis programs finish with an original research project and a defense; non-thesis tracks substitute comprehensive exams, a portfolio, or, in public-history programs, a practicum such as an exhibit or archival project. Thesis tracks suit students headed for a Ph.D.; non-thesis and practicum tracks suit students headed for classrooms, museums, and archives.

How Much Does a Master’s in History Cost?

Published prices span a startling range. The examples below are real tuition totals, as of July 2026, drawn from the programs’ own published rates:

Published tuition as of July 2026; totals exclude fees and living costs.

Three patterns matter. First, budget-priced programs put the whole degree in the mid-teens to low twenty-thousands. Second, residency can swing the price more than the school does: at West Florida, the same 30 credits cost roughly three times as much for out-of-state students as for Floridians. Third, elite private universities charge many multiples of the budget options, and a name-brand MA is rarely required for the careers the degree serves.

Sticker price also is not the whole story. Many public-university history departments fund some master’s students through teaching or research assistantships that waive tuition and pay a stipend, which can make a funded seat at a state school the cheapest path of all. The University of Connecticut is a real example: its history department funds every admitted MA student who isn’t already working full time, covering two years with a full tuition waiver, a nine-month stipend, and health benefits in exchange for roughly 20 hours a week of teaching or research assistant work. Elite MA programs are more often unfunded. Asking every program about assistantship odds before you apply is worth more than any ranking.

Where You Can Earn a Master’s in History

Our directory lists 539 master’s programs in history across the country, and the variety is wider than at the undergraduate level. A few examples from the directory show the range:

• University of California, Los Angeles offers a research-oriented master’s in history at a flagship public university.
• California State University, Sacramento runs an MA in public history, the applied track that feeds museums and archives.
• Austin Peay State University in Tennessee offers an MA in military history, an example of how specialized graduate concentrations can get.

Concentration options at the master’s level mirror the field’s map: our guides to public history, American history, and military history cover the most common tracks. Distance learners have real options too; our online master’s in history guide covers how those programs work.

What Can You Do with a Master’s in History?

The master’s is the working credential for much of the history profession. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a master’s is the typical entry-level education for historians, it is the common expectation for archivists and curators, and it qualifies you to teach at community colleges, where a doctorate is often not required.

Placement lists from real programs make the picture specific. Northeastern University’s history graduate program reports where its recent master’s graduates landed, and the roles cluster exactly where you would expect a research credential to matter. Its MA graduates have gone on to positions such as:

• Museums and historic sites: exhibit developer at the Connecticut Historical Society, development assistant at the USS Constitution Museum, podcast producer at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and curatorial roles at the JFK Library and the Indiana Historical Society.
• Archives and research: researcher and research-coordinator roles at the Massachusetts Historical Society, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, and the Adams National Historical Site.
• Publishing: editor positions at Harvard University Press, Bedford/St. Martin’s, and Houghton Mifflin.

One program’s outcomes are illustration, not a guarantee, but they show the pattern: the curator, archivist, editor, and historical-society jobs that a bachelor’s alone rarely opens tend to run through a master’s, often with a public-history component. The pull toward that work is real. As one FSU master’s student put it in a department interview, “I want to stay within the museum field, if I can. I love the place-based learning aspect of it.”

Is a Master’s in History Worth It?

The earnings case is stronger than most people assume. History majors who go on to hold a graduate degree earn roughly $28,000 more at prime working age than those who stop at the bachelor’s, according to Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce. The catch is that the premium is an average across many career paths, and the degree costs one to two years of tuition plus forgone earnings, so the price you pay (see the cost section above) matters as much as the credential.

The clearest case for the MA: you want a career that expects it, such as archives, curation, community-college teaching, or preparation for a Ph.D. The weakest case: hoping the degree alone will raise your pay in a field that never asks for it. For the broader question of whether history is the right field at all, our history degrees guide works through the evidence in full.

Master’s in History FAQ