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History is the study of the past through the evidence people left behind. In a history degree program, you learn to find that evidence, work out what actually happened and why, and explain it in writing that other people can check. This guide walks through what you study at each level, the concentrations you can choose, where graduates end up, and what the work pays.
Key Facts
- History is almost always a four-year Bachelor of Arts, though the field runs from two-year associate degrees up to the doctorate.
- The degree points toward far more than teaching. Graduates commonly work in law, government, museums, business, and publishing.
- Pay starts modest and climbs with experience. The American Historical Association puts history majors’ median lifetime earnings near $1.3 million.
- At least 217 of the programs in our directory can be completed fully online, but only one of them is a doctorate.
What Is a History Degree?
A history degree teaches you to work like a historian, and most of that work is handling primary sources: the letters, diaries, court filings, census records, old newspapers, photographs, and government documents that survive from the period you study. You learn to figure out who created a source and why, weigh it against other evidence, and write up an account of events that holds together and shows where each claim came from. Coursework usually mixes broad survey classes with smaller research seminars, and many programs finish with a capstone paper or thesis built from original sources.
The degree is overwhelmingly an undergraduate one, and almost always a Bachelor of Arts (BA) instead of a Bachelor of Science. In the 2021–22 academic year, U.S. colleges awarded 21,506 bachelor’s degrees in history, compared with 3,528 master’s degrees and 732 doctorates, according to federal IPEDS completions data. Graduate degrees are far less common and usually tied to a specific goal, such as teaching, research, or museum work.
Who Is a History Degree For?
A history degree fits some goals well and others poorly, so it helps to be honest about both. It tends to suit students who:
- plan to continue to law school, graduate school, or a teaching credential;
- want to work in museums, archives, government, publishing, or research;
- like long-form reading, digging for evidence, and building a written argument.
It is a weaker fit for someone who wants a vocational credential that leads straight to one job title with a set starting salary. A history degree builds transferable skills, mainly research, analysis, and clear writing, not a single technical trade, so graduates usually reach a specific career by pairing the degree with an internship, a certification, or a graduate program. The teacher stereotype undersells that range: only about 20% of history majors work in education, according to the American Historical Association, and the rest spread across the professions in the careers section below.
How Many History Degree Programs Are There?
Our directory currently tracks 2,477 history degree programs at 1,203 U.S. colleges and universities. No official national registry of history programs exists, so we count them department by department; treat these totals as our directory’s map of the market, not a government census.
By level:
| Level | Programs in our directory |
|---|---|
| Bachelor’s | 1,687 |
| Master’s | 539 |
| Doctoral | 251 |
Programs cluster where the students are. The five states with the most history programs in our directory:
| State | Programs |
|---|---|
| New York | 192 |
| California | 159 |
| Texas | 150 |
| Pennsylvania | 147 |
| Ohio | 112 |
Every state has at least a couple of options, and our state-by-state guides break down each one.
Types of History Degrees
History is offered at each of the four academic levels, and each serves a different goal.
Associate Degree in History
An associate degree in history takes about two years and works mainly as a transfer step. Community-college students finish lower-division survey courses, then move to a four-year school to complete the bachelor’s; few history careers open at the associate level on its own.
Bachelor’s Degree in History
The bachelor’s is the standard history degree: about four years of surveys, research seminars, and a concentration, and the entry point for most history-related work and graduate study. Our bachelor’s in history guide covers requirements, the BA-versus-BS question, and where the degree leads.
Master’s Degree in History
A master’s in history takes one to two years and deepens the research training. It is the usual expectation for professional archival and curatorial work, a common credential for advancing teachers, and a frequent step before the doctorate. Details are in our master’s in history guide.
Doctoral Degree (Ph.D.) in History
A Ph.D. in history takes roughly five to nine years and centers on a dissertation, an original book-length study built from archival research. It is the required credential for university professorships and senior research posts. Our Ph.D. in history guide covers admissions, funding, and the academic job market honestly.
History Specializations and Concentrations
Most history programs let you specialize. Schools usually organize concentrations by place (a region of the world) or by theme (a topic or time period), and a third group of programs trains you for a specific profession such as public history or teaching. The counts below are programs in our directory, not a national total.
Geographic Concentrations
Geographic concentrations focus on the history of one region.
| Concentration | Programs (our directory) | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| American / U.S. history | 52 | Runs from the colonial period to the present. Most departments let students narrow further still, into the Civil War era, the American West, or the civil rights movement. |
| European history | 47 | Reaches from antiquity to the present, though the bulk of coursework sits after 1500. The Reformation, the French Revolution, and the two world wars anchor most sequences. |
| World / global history | 32 | Follows connections between regions rather than the story of a single nation, tracing trade, migration, and empire across continents. |
| Asian history | 23 | Usually built around China, Japan, and South Asia, spanning the imperial dynasties through decolonization and the postwar decades. |
| African history | 19 | Covers precolonial kingdoms and trade networks, the transatlantic slave trade, the colonial period, and the independence era. |
| Latin American history | 18 | Spans Mesoamerican and Andean civilizations, three centuries of Iberian colonial rule, and the revolutions and democratic transitions that followed independence. |
| Middle East history | 12 | Covers the rise of Islam, the Ottoman centuries, and the states that emerged after the empire collapsed. Often paired with Arabic, Persian, or Turkish language study. |
Thematic Concentrations
Thematic concentrations follow a subject or time period across regions.
| Concentration | Programs (our directory) | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Teacher education (history) | 68 | Combines history coursework with classroom methods and supervised student teaching, on a track that leads to state licensure. The subject content sits alongside the pedagogy rather than giving way to it. |
| Military history | 22 | Studies armed conflict together with its causes and its aftermath, covering strategy and institutions but also how war reshapes the societies that wage it. |
| Ancient history | 10 | Centers on Greece, Rome, and the ancient Near East. Coursework often runs alongside classical languages and archaeology, since the written record on its own is thin. |
Many departments also offer themes we do not track separately, including social history, women’s and gender history, environmental history, and the history of science.
Applied and Public History
Applied and public history programs prepare students to do history for the public: running archives, managing historic sites, curating exhibits, and handling government records. Our directory includes 149 public history programs and 10 in applied history. Public history is the larger and more established track, and it has its own public history guide.
Related Fields
Two related disciplines sit beside history rather than inside it. Art history, the study of paintings, sculpture, and architecture across time, is the largest history-adjacent specialty in our directory at 380 programs; see the art history section. Museum studies, which trains people to run collections and exhibits, accounts for 89 programs. If your interest is specifically in art or in museum work, one of these may fit better than a general history degree.
Is a History Degree Worth It?
A history degree is not useless, but its value depends on pairing it with a destination; the earnings data supports the degree while the “any job, right away” expectation does not. More than a third of workers in culture fields, including libraries, museums, and publishing, hold history degrees, and history is the second most common undergraduate major among members of Congress, according to the American Historical Association’s analysis of Census data.
Earnings follow a clear arc. History majors earn a median of $47,500 in early career and $80,000 by mid-career, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which also reports that half of recent graduates (50.1%) are underemployed, meaning they hold jobs that do not require a degree. Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce traces a similar path, with history bachelor’s earning about $46,000 early and $73,000 at prime age, rising to roughly $101,000 for those who also hold a graduate degree. That gap helps explain why about half of history majors eventually continue to a graduate or professional program.
The degree’s supply and demand are moving in opposite directions. The number of history bachelor’s degrees awarded each year has fallen about 37% over the past decade, down from 34,299 in 2011–12, in the federal IPEDS series. Yet the working population that holds the degree keeps growing: about 1.12 million employed U.S. workers have history as their degree field, up from roughly 929,000 a decade earlier, according to Census survey data compiled by Data USA. Fewer new graduates are competing for that landscape, and some of its corners, particularly museum and archival work, are projected to grow (see the careers table below).
Graduates who built careers on the degree tend to describe its value in practical terms. As John Rowe, a history major who became a lawyer and then led three companies as a utility CEO over 28 years, wrote in the American Historical Association’s Careers for History Majors, “We bring perspective on the flux of institutions; we think and write with clarity; we have a grasp of enduring human foibles; and we find delicious relevance in vignettes.” His path, from a history BA to the executive suite, is a reminder that the major works as a foundation rather than a fixed track.
History Careers and Salaries
History degrees lead to a wide range of jobs, and pay depends heavily on the role and the level of degree. The table below shows median wages and projected job growth for four common destinations, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
| Occupation | Median pay (2024) | Projected growth (2024–34) | Typical entry education |
|---|---|---|---|
| Postsecondary teachers | $83,980 | +7% | Doctorate (master’s at two-year colleges) |
| Historians | $74,050 | +2% | Master’s |
| High school teachers | $64,580 | −2% | Bachelor’s |
| Archivists, curators, and museum workers | $57,100 | +6% | Master’s common |
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook (2024).
A few things stand out. The “historian” job title itself is small, with about 3,400 positions nationally and roughly 300 openings a year, so most graduates work under other titles. Teaching employs the most people of the group, though high school teaching is projected to shrink slightly while museum and archival work grows. Pay also climbs steeply with the level of degree: postsecondary teaching, which usually requires a doctorate, tops the table.
Those occupations sit inside broader fields, and the job titles history graduates actually hold run wider than the table:
- Law and legal services: paralegal (median $61,010, BLS), legal researcher, litigation support specialist.
- Museums, archives, and historic sites: archivist, collections manager, exhibit developer, historic site interpreter.
- Government: staff historian at a federal agency, historic preservation officer, records manager.
- Business and nonprofits: grant writer, development officer, market researcher, management consultant.
- Writing and media: editor, fact-checker, technical writer, author (writers and authors earn a median $72,270, BLS).
Key Resources for History Students
A few national organizations are worth knowing early:
- American Historical Association (AHA): the main professional body for historians; publishes career data and its Careers for History Majors booklet.
- Organization of American Historians (OAH): focused on the study and teaching of U.S. history.
- National Archives (NARA): the federal government’s records, with large free primary-source collections online.
- Library of Congress: one of the world’s largest libraries, with extensive digitized documents, photographs, and maps.
History Degree FAQ
Can You Go to Law School or Graduate School with a History Degree?
Yes. History sits alongside political science and English as one of the majors law schools see most, and the close reading, evidence-weighing, and argument it trains are what the LSAT and first-year law courses reward. A history bachelor’s meets the prerequisites for most law, public policy, and humanities graduate programs, and law schools require no specific undergraduate major.
Do You Have to Become a Teacher with a History Degree?
No. Teaching is one route, and a popular one, but it accounts for a minority of history graduates. Public-school teaching usually means earning a state license on top of the degree, which involves passing a licensure test such as the Praxis and completing a semester of supervised student teaching. Many students handle this by pairing history with a teacher-preparation program or a master’s in education.
What Is the Difference between a History Degree and a History Education Degree?
A history degree centers on the discipline itself: sources, research, and historical writing. A history education (or social studies education) degree adds teaching methods, supervised classroom practice, and the coursework required for a state license. If your goal is to teach in a K–12 school, the education track leads more directly to certification; if you want to keep other careers open, the straight history degree stays more flexible.
Is a BA or BS in History Better?
Neither carries an advantage. Graduate schools and employers evaluate the courses you took and the research you produced, not the two letters after the degree, and the overwhelming majority of history programs award the BA anyway. The occasional BS version usually signals an education or social-science emphasis. Our bachelor’s in history guide breaks down the split and what the rare BS options look like.
Do You Need a Ph.D. to Become a Historian?
Not for most jobs with “historian” in the title. Government agencies, museums, and historical societies routinely hire historians at the graduate-degree level shown in the careers table above, while the doctorate is the requirement for tenure-track university teaching and senior academic research. The practical rule: pick the credential the specific career expects, not the biggest one available.
Can You Earn a History Degree 100% Online?
Yes, especially at the bachelor’s and master’s levels; Bellevue University’s fully online history bachelor’s is one example from our directory. Online options thin out sharply at the doctoral level, where distance-based programs remain rare. See our online history degrees guide for the current list by level.