History Degrees in Indiana

Abraham Lincoln grew up here, the Coffin house in Fountain City moved some 2,000 people toward freedom on the Underground Railroad, and the state still calls itself the Crossroads of America. Indiana takes its own past seriously, and the degree programs follow.

The state has 36 colleges and universities offering history degrees, with 72 programs between them. That breaks down to 46 bachelor’s degrees, 19 master’s degrees, and 7 doctorates, and 13 of those programs can be completed online.

Three schools carry history all the way from bachelor’s through doctorate: Indiana University Bloomington, Purdue University, and the University of Notre Dame. Everywhere else in the state stops at the bachelor’s or master’s level.

Top History Schools in Indiana

As with every state we cover, we scored all 36 Indiana schools on four factors: history degree offerings and program variety (40%), student outcomes (25%), reputation (20%), and affordability (15%). Notre Dame and Purdue post the strongest student outcomes on this list, while Purdue University Northwest carries the best affordability score among the schools that made it. Here are Indiana’s best history degrees.

Most Affordable History Degrees in Indiana

Annual in-state tuition and fees. The five Indiana University regional campuses charge an identical system rate.

History Education in Indiana

Public university systems dominate here. Indiana University alone accounts for 24 of the state’s 72 history programs across seven campuses, and Purdue adds another 7 across three more. Between them, those two systems hold 43% of every history program in Indiana.

The private colleges are more numerous but thinner. Twenty-two private nonprofit institutions offer 34 programs, while just 13 public schools offer 37.

Almost all of Indiana’s bachelor’s programs are Bachelor of Arts degrees, outnumbering the Bachelor of Science option 22 to 3.

One thing Indiana does better than most states is transfer. State law establishes the Indiana College Core, a 30-credit block of general education coursework that moves as a single unit between every public college and university in the state, Ivy Tech included. Finish it at one Indiana public institution and it satisfies the general education requirement at another. For anyone planning to start at a community college and finish a history degree at a four-year school, that block is the mechanism, and the Indiana Commission for Higher Education keeps the current requirements posted.

Becoming a History Teacher in Indiana

Indiana issues history teaching licenses under a content area it calls Social Studies: Historical Perspectives. The license comes from the state, not from your university, so the degree alone will not put you in a classroom.

You will need a bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited institution, a completed state-approved educator preparation program, and a passing score on the content-area licensure exam. Indiana also asks for a set of certifications that surprise a lot of applicants: current CPR certification from an approved provider, plus separate training certificates covering suicide prevention, human trafficking, and child abuse and neglect.

First licenses are issued as Initial Practitioner and convert to Practitioner later. Everything runs through the state’s LVIS system, and no license is issued before your graduation date.

These rules change often enough that you should confirm them yourself. The Indiana Department of Education’s educator licensing pages carry the current version.

History Careers in Indiana

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

Two things stand out. Teaching is where the jobs are, by an enormous margin, with more secondary school positions in Indiana than every other occupation here combined many times over. And the specialist roles are genuinely small: 30 working historians and 70 archivists in the entire state. Those are real careers, and they are also thin markets where openings do not come up often.

Indiana pay trails the national median in every occupation on this list, and the gap widens as the work gets more specialized. Postsecondary teaching comes closest at 5% below national. Historians sit 17% below, archivists 16% below, and curators 15% below. A lower cost of living absorbs part of that gap, though not all of it.

History Resources in Indiana

• Indiana Association of Historians, the state’s professional body for historians since 1980. It runs an annual conference and the Bennett-Tinsley Award for undergraduate history research, which is worth knowing about if you are writing a thesis.
• Indiana Historical Society, among the oldest and largest state historical societies in the country, with a research library and archives in Indianapolis.
• Indiana State Archives, the official repository for state government records.
• Indiana State Museum, holding statewide natural and cultural history collections.
• Conner Prairie, a living history museum in Fishers and Indiana’s first Smithsonian affiliate.
• Indiana Memory, statewide digital collections drawn from libraries, archives, and museums across the state.

Frequently Asked Questions