History Degrees in New York

New York did not finish abolishing slavery until July 4, 1827. The 1799 Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery freed children born after that summer but bound them to indenture, males until twenty-eight and females until twenty-five, while anyone born earlier remained enslaved for life. A second law in 1817 finally set the 1827 date, freeing roughly 4,600 people, and enslaved laborers still appear in the New York census as late as 1840. The documents are in the state’s own archives in Albany, which is the sort of thing that makes New York a serious place to study the subject.

New York has 82 colleges and universities offering history degrees, with 193 programs among them: 115 bachelor’s degrees, 49 master’s degrees, and 29 doctorates.

That is more history programs, and more history doctorates, than any other state in the country.

Top History Schools in New York

We scored all 82 New York 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%). Depth is not close, with NYU at 18 programs against Binghamton and Columbia at 7 apiece. Outcomes favor Columbia at a 96% four-year completion rate and Cornell at 95%. Reputation is near-uniform, since nine of the ten below are R1 research universities. Affordability is what separates them in practice, and it is why Binghamton at $10,567 and Stony Brook at $10,931 outrank Columbia and Cornell despite lower completion rates. Here are New York’s best history degrees.

Most Affordable History Degrees in New York

Annual in-state tuition and fees. Every school on this list belongs to the City University of New York, and the entire list falls between $7,235 and $7,538. The Graduate Center at the top is a graduate-only campus, so its figure is the in-state price of doctoral instead of undergraduate study.

History Education in New York

New York runs three distinct kinds of institution for this subject, and they barely overlap. Every school on the affordability list above is a CUNY campus, clustered between $7,235 and $7,538. Four of the top five ranked schools are SUNY university centers, between $10,567 and $10,936. Six of the top ten are private universities, between $62,796 and $71,845. A New York student’s first real decision is which of those three worlds to enter, and the price difference between the cheapest and the dearest is close to tenfold.

The scale behind that is genuine. New York holds 29 history doctorates, more than any other state, ahead of Massachusetts and California at 21 apiece. Eleven schools carry the subject at all three levels. New York is also one of the few large states where private colleges carry more of the field than public ones, with 54 private institutions running 110 programs against 28 publics running 80.

Art history is the state’s defining strength. Thirty-nine of New York’s 190 programs carry an art history designation, the largest number in the country, and they run to the doctorate at NYU, Columbia, Cornell, Binghamton, and Stony Brook. New York also has 10 museum studies programs, again more than any other state, including NYU’s master’s, Buffalo’s critical museum studies M.A., and provision across the CUNY colleges. For a student aiming at curatorial or collections work, the concentration of both training and employers here has no real equivalent elsewhere.

Transfer works differently than in states with a single statewide block. New York protects credit inside each system, not across all of public higher education. Under SUNY Seamless Transfer, completing the SUNY General Education Requirements at one SUNY campus satisfies them at another, and SUNY Transfer Paths lay out the coursework common to every SUNY campus offering a given major. CUNY Pathways, in place since fall 2013, does the equivalent within CUNY. Moving between the two systems, or in from a private college, is a case-by-case matter rather than a guarantee.

Online provision is larger than the top ten suggests, because most of it sits outside the ranking. Our directory lists 13 online history programs, and Empire State University runs 7 of them. Empire State has the second-deepest catalog in the state at 8 programs and is entirely online, offering a B.A. or B.S. in Historical Studies with concentrations including American, global, military, and social history, plus an M.A. in Public History. It does not appear in our top ten because the ranking weights research classification and completion rates, but for a distance student it is the most substantial option in New York. The University at Albany is the only ranked school with online degrees. Our guide to online history degrees covers the wider field.

Becoming a History Teacher in New York

New York issues a Social Studies 7-12 certificate, so the credential covers economics and government alongside history, not history by itself.

The coursework requirement leans harder on history than most states manage. NYSED sets a 30 semester hour content core, and its regulation specifies that this must include study in economics, government, and at least 21 semester hours in the history and geography of the United States and the world. Seven of every ten required hours are history and geography.

That has a practical consequence worth knowing before you choose a major. A history degree will carry most of the content core on its own, unlike states where a social studies credential demands substantial separate coursework in other disciplines. What it will not automatically cover is the economics and government requirement, so plan those in deliberately.

Certification also requires two examinations: the Educating All Students (EAS) test and the Social Studies Content Specialty Test.

Confirm current requirements with the New York State Education Department before choosing a program.

History Careers in New York

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

New York pays well above the national median in four of these five occupations. Secondary school teachers earn 35% above national, curators 25% above, postsecondary history teachers 20% above, and archivists 14% above. The exception is historians, who earn 18% below the national median.

That inversion is worth sitting with, because New York employs more historians than any other state, 410 of them, and pays them least well relative to national of any occupation on its own table. The likely explanation is composition instead of stinginess: a large share of the roles the BLS counts as historian sit in nonprofits, historic sites, and consultancies rather than in government or corporate research, and those are not high-paying employers even in New York.

The rest of the picture is straightforwardly strong. New York has 1,330 curator positions, more than any other state, and 960 archivist jobs, both paying above national. Combined with 11 museum studies programs, that makes New York the largest single market in the country for curatorial work. As with California, the wage premiums should be read against New York City housing costs, not taken at face value.

History Resources in New York

• The New York Historical, 170 Central Park West. Founded in 1804 and New York City’s oldest museum, it dropped the hyphen and the word “Society” from its name in October 2024 on its 220th anniversary. Its Tang Wing for American Democracy opened in June 2026, a $175 million, 71,000 square foot addition that is the campus’s first expansion in nearly a century and now houses the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library collection.
• New York State Archives, Albany. The state’s official repository, holding the colonial and state records that document everything from Dutch land grants to the gradual abolition acts. The research room shares the Cultural Education Center at Empire State Plaza with the New York State Museum and the New York State Library, so all three are reachable in a single visit.

Frequently Asked Questions