15 Best Online Master's in History 2026–2027

Overview | M.A. in History

• Availability: 100% Online
• Program Focus: U.S. History and World History tracks
• Estimated Total Cost: $16,200 (est., tuition only)
• Accreditation: Higher Learning Commission (HLC)

Program Summary

Every student in this program produces original scholarship. Not “engages with” it, produces it: IU requires at least one semester-long research project of your own, and you choose how to satisfy it, through an extra research seminar, a digital and public history seminar, or a full thesis. That requirement is why an R1 university lands in a virtual tie for the top spot on our list, four-tenths of a point behind Missouri State.

The catalog carries Digital and Public History alongside the U.S. and World History tracks, plus a course in teaching college history. That last one is aimed squarely at community-college instructors and K-12 teachers looking to move up. The degree is delivered through IU Online and hosted across the university’s campuses, and the diploma reads as an Indiana University degree.

Understand the structure before you apply. This is a consortial degree delivered through IU Online and taught by faculty across the university’s campuses, which is a different program from the residential master’s at any single IU campus, with a different and lighter application. What you get at the end is an Indiana University degree.

Thirty credits at $540 works out to about $16,200, mid-range here and a fair price for an R1. IU also starts students four times a year. Most research universities on this list open once or twice. It’s small, roughly 15 graduates a year, so expect faculty who know your name.

IU’s Online M.A. in History

Overview | M.A. in History

• Availability: Online and in person
• Program Focus: Wide range of geographic and thematic fields, from public history to environmental and urban history
• Estimated Total Cost: $20,736 (est., tuition only)
• Accreditation: Higher Learning Commission (HLC)

Program Summary

Most programs give you one way to finish. CU Denver gives you three, and they’re built for three different people:

• Thesis, 6 credits. A major original project built on primary-source research. This is what a PhD application wants to see.
• Curriculum project, 3 credits. Built for teachers. You develop course curricula instead of a monograph.
• Project plus elective, 3 credits. Experiential work, a digital project, or an internship, aimed at museums and public history.

That’s the most thoughtfully sorted set of exits on this list, and the fields you can work in are just as broad, spanning East Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe on the geographic side and public history, museum studies, historic preservation, gender and sexuality, and environmental history on the thematic side. The department also publishes a student-run Historical Studies Journal, so there’s a place to put your first article if doctoral work is the plan.

Be aware of what CU Denver doesn’t publish. The department’s pages say the degree runs online and in person but never state whether online courses meet at set times or whether you’ll need to come to Denver. Ask before you enroll. The program is 36 credits, longer than most here, which at $576 a credit puts it above $20,000.

CU Denver’s M.A. in History

Overview | M.A. in History (Professional Enrichment)

• Availability: 100% Online, classified as synchronous
• Program Focus: Distribution across World, European, and U.S. history
• Estimated Total Cost: $13,500 (est., tuition only)
• Accreditation: Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC)

Program Summary

Texas Tech is refreshingly blunt about who this degree is for. Its own catalog language describes it as serving people for whom a graduate degree would provide career advancement in a field other than the one requiring a history PhD. Translated: this is the professional’s master’s, not the academic’s, and naming that plainly saves applicants a lot of guessing.

The structure follows. You don’t pick a concentration here. Coursework distributes across World, European, and U.S. history, and the degree ends in a three-part capstone portfolio with an oral defense. Everyone graduates having defended their work out loud, which is unusual for a non-thesis program and genuinely useful practice if you’re headed into teaching.

Two things set it apart from almost everything else here. Texas Tech classifies the format as synchronous, so expect scheduled sessions. Nine of the other 14 programs here run asynchronously. Check the specifics with the department’s online MA page before you plan a work schedule around it. And the price is the quiet story: $450 a credit across 30 credits works out near $13,500, third-cheapest total on this list, which is a genuine bargain for an R1 research university. For an R1 degree, only two programs on this list cost less.

Texas Tech’s Online M.A. in History

Overview | M.A. in History

• Availability: 100% Online, asynchronous, no campus visits
• Program Focus: General history with capstone-based completion
• Estimated Total Cost: $21,990 (est., tuition only)
• Accreditation: Higher Learning Commission (HLC)

Program Summary

Read this one carefully if a PhD is anywhere in your thinking, because ASU draws a hard line: online students complete the capstone course and may not take the thesis or the applied project. Those are reserved for campus students. It’s an honest, clearly published rule, and it means the single best doctoral-application asset, a supervised original thesis, isn’t available through this route.

For everyone else, the machinery is impressive. ASU’s history school has been teaching online since 1999, and its capstone is more substantial than the word suggests: two revised research papers, a recorded video research defense, and a shareable digital portfolio you can actually show an employer. Six start dates a year, fully asynchronous, no campus requirement.

Scale is the other advantage. At roughly 160 graduates a year, this is the second-largest program in our top 15, which buys you a deep course catalog and a real student community. Three people and an adjunct this is not. Federal earnings data puts this degree field at ASU near $64,600, second-highest among the five ranked schools that report anything at all. The figure tracks a whole degree field, so read it loosely. At $733 a credit it’s on the expensive side here, and you’re paying for the infrastructure and the name.

ASU’s Online M.A. in History

Overview | M.A. in History

• Availability: Online option available
• Program Focus: Academic track (30 credits) with a separate public history track
• Estimated Total Cost: $19,020 (est., tuition only)
• Accreditation: Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE)

Program Summary

Albany’s history department does something most departments only talk about. Its Institute for History and Public Engagement, launched in 2016 with National Endowment for the Humanities support, works on embedding historical thinking into fields like homeland security, public health, and informatics. That’s a department actively arguing that history belongs outside the history building, which tells you something about how they’ll teach you.

The degree itself is a thesis program at an R1 research university, and Albany sits within walking distance of the New York State Archives, one of the deeper state repositories in the country. The department also runs dual-degree paths, including a four-year MA and law degree with Albany Law School, though those are campus arrangements, not online ones.

Now the honest part. Albany publishes very little about how the online version actually runs. The program pages never say whether courses meet at set times or whether you’ll ever need to be in Albany. A separate 36-credit public history track exists, and its online availability isn’t spelled out either. Two entry points a year, 30 credits, $634 each. This is a strong department and a real research-university credential; you’ll just have to ask admissions the logistics questions this page can’t answer for you.

Albany’s M.A. in History

Overview | M.A. in History

• Availability: Online, asynchronous
• Program Focus: Atlantic World, Latin America, and global history
• Estimated Total Cost: $21,150 (est., tuition only)
• Accreditation: Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC)

Program Summary

FIU sets a bar we didn’t see anywhere else on this list: the research paper that completes the degree has to earn an A- or better. Not a pass, not a B. If your paper comes in below that line, you haven’t finished. That single rule tells you more about the program’s standards than any brochure paragraph could.

FIU built the country’s PhD program in Atlantic History. FIU built the country’s PhD program in Atlantic History, which means the faculty you’d study under work on the ocean-spanning connections between Africa, Europe, and the Americas, and Miami is an unusually apt place to do it. The department’s public history program, running since 2000, partners with institutions including The Wolfsonian, HistoryMiami, Vizcaya, and Everglades National Park.

A few practical notes. The online coursework is asynchronous, which FIU states plainly in its course listings, and entry comes twice a year. Thirty credits at $705 apiece puts the degree around $21,150, which lands in the pricier third of our list. FIU also doesn’t publish whether online students ever need to appear on campus. Ask about both, especially if the public history side is what draws you. Its online availability isn’t spelled out anywhere.

FIU’s M.A. in History

Overview | M.A. or M.S. in History

• Availability: 100% Online, asynchronous
• Program Focus: Thesis-based study with a choice of M.A. or M.S.
• Estimated Total Cost: $27,405 (est., tuition only)
• Accreditation: Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU)

Program Summary

Oregon State is the only program here that lets you choose between an M.A. and an M.S. in history, and the difference comes down to exactly one requirement:

• The M.A. requires a language exam by your second year. It’s the traditional humanities credential and the better signal if doctoral programs are in your future.
• The M.S. drops the language exam. Same credits, same courses, same thesis-or-project choice. Everything else is identical.

That’s a rare and genuinely useful piece of flexibility. A working teacher who has no intention of reading German archival material can skip a requirement that would otherwise cost them a term, and a PhD-bound student can take it on deliberately.

Be clear-eyed about the rest. This is a small program, roughly four graduates a year, the smallest in our top 15. You’ll get close faculty attention; you won’t get a cohort. Entry is fall only, once a year, and the degree runs 45 quarter credits at $609 each, around $27,405, second-priciest here. Oregon State charges every online student the same rate with no nonresident surcharge, which softens that number for out-of-state applicants. The university’s special collections, including the Linus Pauling papers, are a real asset for the right thesis topic.

Oregon State’s Online History Master’s

Overview | M.A. in History

• Availability: 100% Online, asynchronous, no campus visits
• Program Focus: General history with major and minor field study
• Estimated Total Cost: $17,730 (est., tuition only)
• Accreditation: Higher Learning Commission (HLC)

Program Summary

Kearney’s non-thesis track asks more of you than most non-thesis tracks do. Instead of coursework and a exit exam, you assemble a comprehensive portfolio and write comprehensive essays in both a major and a minor field, which forces the kind of synthesis across subjects that a single capstone paper can skip. The thesis route is there too if you want the full research apprenticeship.

The department has deeper roots than its size suggests. Its Phi Alpha Theta chapter, the national history honor society, was chartered in 1970 and counts more than 400 members and alumni, which is a long institutional memory for a regional university and a useful network if you stay in the Plains.

The logistics are refreshingly simple. Everything is asynchronous, UNK states outright that you can finish without setting foot on campus, and there are three entry points a year. Cost sits squarely in the middle of our list, about $17,730 for the 30 credits. UNK’s federal earnings figure comes in around $62,200, third among the five ranked schools with published data. It counts everyone in the degree field, which makes it a rough marker and nothing sharper. UNK also runs a separate public history master’s, and the two programs share enough web boilerplate that requirements and prices blur together. Confirm which page you’re on.

UNK’s Online M.A. in History

Overview | M.A. in History

• Availability: Online
• Program Focus: General history with three completion routes
• Estimated Total Cost: $12,480 (est., tuition only)
• Accreditation: Higher Learning Commission (HLC)

Program Summary

Pittsburg State has built the most cleverly balanced set of completion options on this list. All three routes total the same 30 hours, but the seminar load shifts depending on how independent your final project is: write a thesis and you take three seminars, do an applied research project and you take four, choose the portfolio and you take five. More independence, less coursework. Less independence, more of it. Nothing about that tradeoff is hidden.

Pittsburg State also states outright that thesis availability is competitive and depends on a faculty member agreeing to supervise you. So if the thesis is why you’re applying, raise it in your first conversation with the department. Don’t assume the option is automatic.

Then there’s the price. The full 30-hour degree comes to roughly $12,480, second-cheapest on our entire list and about sixty dollars behind the top-ranked program. Three entry points a year.

The department also makes two claims about outcomes that are worth knowing and worth verifying: it advertises a 90% employment rate within six months of graduation, and says more than 60% of its students publish in academic journals before they finish. Neither figure carries a citation on the page, so treat them as the school’s own reporting and ask how they’re measured. The department publishes less about online logistics than we’d like, with nothing clear on delivery format or campus visits, so add those to the same conversation. Only one program on this list costs less, and none of the cheaper options give you three ways to finish.

Pittsburg State’s M.A. in History

Overview | M.A. in History

• Availability: Online, asynchronous
• Program Focus: Thematic tracks in Rights & Identity, War & Violence, and Encounters & Exchanges
• Estimated Total Cost: $35,070 (est., tuition only)
• Accreditation: Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC)

Program Summary

The Journal of Southern History runs its book review operation out of Sam Houston’s history department, and graduate students help edit it. That is a genuinely uncommon thing to have access to as a master’s student. You’d be working inside the production of a major scholarly journal, which teaches you how the field’s gatekeeping actually functions in a way no seminar quite can.

The department organizes its degree thematically instead of geographically, which is the other thing that sets it apart. Instead of picking a region, you work through Rights & Identity, War & Violence, or Encounters & Exchanges, cutting across periods and places. The thesis route runs 30 credits and the non-thesis route 36, so at Sam Houston the research-heavy path is also the shorter and cheaper one.

Now the number you’re going to notice. At $1,169 a credit, this is by a wide margin the most expensive program in our ranking, roughly $35,070 for the thesis track, and nothing else here comes close. It earned its rank on the strength of the program itself and the institution, not on value, and we’d be doing you a disservice not to say so plainly. If the journal work and the thematic structure are what you want, it’s a distinctive program. If cost is anywhere near the top of your list, compare it hard against the four programs above it that finish under $20,000.

Sam Houston’s M.A. in History

Overview | M.A. in History

• Availability: 100% Online, asynchronous
• Program Focus: American history, military history, and public history concentrations
• Estimated Total Cost: $21,747 (est., tuition only)
• Accreditation: New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE)

Program Summary

No history master’s in the country graduates more students online. SNHU turns out roughly 204 a year, and the operation behind that number does what scale is supposed to do: five start dates annually, fully asynchronous 10-week terms, and a course catalog deep enough that its concentrations are real ones.

Your final project changes depending on which concentration you pick. Choose public history and the capstone turns into a project and a presentation instead of a written thesis paper, which fits the field it’s preparing you for. The public history coursework is the most applied on this list too, running through archival management, museum collection management, and documentary editing. That’s practitioner training, not a survey.

SNHU also reports that roughly 44% of the students in its military history concentration come from military backgrounds, a figure it publishes without a source, so read it as the school’s own count. It squares with how hard the program markets to service members and veterans.

Two honest notes. This is a capstone program, not a thesis program, so PhD-bound applicants should look at the thesis options higher on this list. And at $659 a credit across 33 credits, roughly $21,747, it’s priced above several R1 universities here despite being a teaching institution, not a research one. Federal data shows about $55,000 for this degree field at SNHU. That covers the field across the university, not this program by itself. You’re paying for five start dates, applied concentrations, and a school that has solved online delivery at volume.

SNHU’s Online M.A. in History

Overview | M.A. in History

• Availability: 100% Online, asynchronous, no campus visits
• Program Focus: A single shared curriculum, no concentrations
• Estimated Total Cost: $15,525 (est., tuition only)
• Accreditation: Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU)

Program Summary

Eastern Washington’s final portfolio is the most practical exit requirement we found. You don’t produce something new. You go back through work you’ve already written and polish it toward publishable quality, and the same course walks you through building a curriculum vitae, drafting a conference or book proposal, and running a job search. It treats you as someone about to enter a profession, not someone about to be graded one last time.

There are no concentrations at all. All students move through the same nine courses together, which trades away specialization and buys back something most asynchronous programs never manage, which is an actual shared cohort.

On cost, read carefully. EWU has the lowest per-credit rate in our ranking at $345, and it charges every student that rate regardless of residency. But the degree runs 45 credits on a quarter system, so the total lands near $15,525, well above the $10,000 the per-credit price implies. That still ranks fourth-cheapest overall. It just isn’t the $10,000 degree the per-credit rate advertises. The scheduling is the other draw: seven start dates a year, more than any program here, on six-week courses. Full details are in the university catalog.

EWU’s Online M.A. in History

Overview | M.A. in History

• Availability: Online, with graduate seminars offered in real time
• Program Focus: General history with a thesis option
• Estimated Total Cost: $16,950 (est., tuition only)
• Accreditation: Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE)

Program Summary

If the thing you dread about online graduate school is talking to nobody, Brockport is your program. Its graduate seminars are offered in a synchronous, real-time online format, so you’re in live discussion with faculty and classmates instead of posting into a forum and waiting. At least one asynchronous course runs every term for the weeks when your schedule breaks, which is a sensible hedge, not an all-or-nothing bet.

The department does real public-facing work, including the Fannie Barrier Williams Project, and its students produce scholarship that lands somewhere permanent: one master’s thesis of oral histories is now archived at the Truman Presidential Library. For a program this size, that’s a meaningful signal about the quality of supervision.

Speaking of size, be clear about what you’re joining. Brockport graduates around eight history master’s students a year, second-smallest in our top 15. That means seminar rooms of a handful of people and faculty who will absolutely notice if you go quiet, which suits some students and unsettles others. There’s also a nonprofit management certificate that double-counts coursework toward the degree, useful if museums or historical societies are the goal. The whole degree runs about $16,950, which is a reasonable price for live seminars.

Brockport’s M.A. in History

Overview | M.A. in History

• Availability: 100% Online, no campus visits
• Program Focus: Concentrations in U.S. History, World History, and Legal and Constitutional History
• Estimated Total Cost: $26,100 (est., tuition only)
• Accreditation: New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE)

Program Summary

Norwich carries the strongest earnings figure on our list. Federal data puts this degree field at roughly $70,200, ahead of every other ranked school that reports one. Like all these figures, it measures a degree field, not a graduating class. For a school best known as America’s oldest private military college, that outcome tracks with where its graduates go.

Understand what this degree is and isn’t. Norwich’s history department is formally the Department of Military History and History, and the M.A. in History shares its academic home and much of its faculty with the university’s separate military history master’s. But they’re different degrees. This one offers three concentrations, in U.S. History, World History, and Legal and Constitutional History, and the school’s own page advertising a fourth is out of date; the public history option it refers to is a separate master’s. If military history is the actual goal, our master’s in military history guide covers that program directly.

What’s here is a thesis-track degree at 36 credits, four start dates a year, and an explicit statement that no residency is required, which is worth having in writing given how many programs on this list stay silent about it. Tuition is steep, roughly $26,100 all in, and among the higher totals here. The legal and constitutional track is also hard to find anywhere else online, which is part of what you’re paying for. Read the catalog listing, not the marketing page for current requirements.

Norwich’s Online M.A. in History