History Degrees in North Carolina

John White left about 115 English settlers on Roanoke Island in August 1587, including his granddaughter Virginia Dare, born ten days before he sailed for supplies. He got back on August 18, 1590, her third birthday, and found the place empty and the word CROATOAN carved into a post. Before he left, White and the colonists had agreed on a signal: carve the destination if you move, and add a Maltese cross if you are forced to. There was no cross. That absence is why White went home hopeful, and it is a fair illustration of what the subject actually involves, which is reasoning carefully from evidence that stops before the story does. North Carolina teaches that reasoning at more universities than most states, and at a price very few can match.

North Carolina has 45 colleges and universities offering history degrees, with 88 programs among them: 66 bachelor’s degrees, 17 master’s degrees, and 5 doctorates.

One of those doctorates is in public history, a field only five states offer at that level, and the state’s largest history department charges $8,994 a year in state.

Top History Schools in North Carolina

We scored all 44 North Carolina 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%). Chapel Hill takes depth outright at 14 programs, with NC State, Duke, and Appalachian State tied at 6. Outcomes go to Duke at 97% and Chapel Hill at 91% completing in four years. Reputation rests on three R1 universities. Affordability is where North Carolina is genuinely unusual, because seven of these eight schools charge between $7,239 and $8,994 in state. Here are North Carolina’s best history degrees.

Most Affordable History Degrees in North Carolina

Annual in-state tuition and fees. All ten are public, and every one of them comes in under $7,501. UNC Pembroke’s $3,648 is the second-lowest figure for a history degree anywhere in the country.

History Education in North Carolina

North Carolina is the cheapest large state in the country for this subject. UNC Pembroke charges $3,648 a year, second only to Georgia nationally, and every school on the affordability list above comes in under $7,501. More striking, the price advantage does not disappear at the top: Chapel Hill offers 14 history programs for $8,994, which is the deepest catalog in the country outside Emory and NYU and cheaper than almost any comparable department anywhere.

Public institutions carry the field. Fourteen public universities run 51 of the state’s 87 programs, against 30 private colleges running 36. That concentration is why the ranking above is seven-eighths public and why the tuition figures are so tightly clustered.

Applied and public history is North Carolina’s real strength. Eight of its programs carry a public history designation, level with Illinois and behind only Pennsylvania, and the field runs all the way to the top: NC State holds a Ph.D. in Public History, one of only five in the country. Beneath that, Wilmington and Appalachian State both offer public history master’s degrees, Charlotte and Greensboro run public history concentrations, Greensboro adds two museum studies concentrations, and Appalachian State offers applied and public history as an undergraduate B.S. Four different schools in the top eight let you concentrate on the applied side.

What the state does not offer is much doctoral study generally. There are only 5 history doctorates in North Carolina and just four schools teaching the subject at all three levels, so 74% of the state’s programs stop at the bachelor’s.

Transfer runs through the Comprehensive Articulation Agreement between the community college system and the UNC System. Completing an Associate in Arts or Associate in Science guarantees junior status and 60 to 61 semester hours of credit, and it guarantees admission to a UNC System university. The limit worth knowing is that the guarantee is to the system, not to a campus, program, or major, so a specific department can still turn you down. The agreement was revised recently, so check the current version at the North Carolina Community College System.

Online provision is thin at 5 programs, four bachelor’s and one master’s, with Greensboro running two and East Carolina one. Our guide to online history degrees covers the wider field.

Becoming a History Teacher in North Carolina

North Carolina issues the Professional Educator’s License and licenses social studies in bands, 6-9 and 9-12, so the credential covers the wider social science field, not history by itself.

The route is a completed Educator Preparation Program, traditional or alternative, followed by the relevant Praxis Subject Assessment. The Department of Public Instruction handles licensure and publishes the current test list.

If you want the coursework built into the degree, NC State offers a B.A. in History with a teacher education track, which is the one our directory lists in the state. Several other departments run licensure pathways alongside the major rather than inside it, so ask each department directly instead of assuming from the degree title.

Confirm current requirements with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction before choosing a program.

History Careers in North Carolina

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

Every occupation on this list pays below the national median, and the ordering contains the sharpest tension on this page. North Carolina supports 600 curator positions, the fourth-largest count of any state, and pays them 22% below the national median at $49,470.

That combination is worth thinking about carefully if the state’s public history training is what attracted you. There is genuinely more museum and collections work here than in most places, and the state trains for it heavily across four of the eight schools ranked above. It is also, by these figures, among the least well paid places in the country to do that work.

Historians come closest to national at 4% below, and secondary school teaching, which carries 28,620 of the state’s positions, sits 20% under. Set against tuition of $3,648 to $8,994, the calculation for an in-state student is a genuinely cheap degree feeding into a market that pays below the national rate. Whether that trade works depends heavily on whether you stay.

History Resources in North Carolina

• State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh. Holds the records of the colony and the state from 1663 to the present, with public research rooms in Raleigh, Asheville, and Manteo, the last of which sits on Roanoke Island itself.
• North Carolina Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC Chapel Hill. Traces its origins to the founding of the North Carolina Historical Society in 1844 and is the largest collection of printed material relating to any single state. Wilson Library also houses the Southern Historical Collection and the Southern Folklife Collection.
• North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh. Closed since October 2024 for a major renovation, with reopening scheduled for fall 2028. Roughly 150,000 artifacts were relocated for the work, which adds 40,000 square feet and about 25% more gallery space. A separate museum shop has reopened on Glenwood Avenue in the meantime, but the galleries are not available to researchers or visitors.

Frequently Asked Questions