History Degrees in Utah

Somewhere in a mountain near Salt Lake City sits a vault built in 1965 holding more than 3.5 billion images of historical records, gathered under agreements with archives, libraries, and churches in over a hundred countries. It is the Granite Mountain Records Vault, and you cannot go in. There is no public access, for security reasons. What the vault does instead is send its contents out: the microfilm has been digitized for years and published free through FamilySearch. Utah assembled one of the largest collections of records anywhere and then made the copies, instead of the building, the point of access. The teaching side is smaller than that effort suggests, and more specialized than its size would predict.

Utah has 8 colleges and universities offering history degrees, with 18 programs among them: 14 bachelor’s degrees, 3 master’s degrees, and 1 doctorate.

Two of those eight schools hold R1 research classification, which is a lot of research capacity for a state with 17 history programs.

Top History Schools in Utah

Utah has eight history departments, which puts it in top-three territory, not a longer list. Our scoring uses the same four factors as every state we cover: history degree offerings and program variety (40%), student outcomes (25%), reputation (20%), and affordability (15%). Depth decides the top two, where Utah leads with 5 programs to Utah State’s 4, and reputation cannot separate them because both are R1. Third place goes a different way entirely, on a completion rate of 81% and a price under $7,000. Here are Utah’s best history degrees.

Most Affordable History Degrees in Utah

Most affordable history degrees in Utah

Rank	School	Program	Tuition per year
1	Utah Tech University	B.A. or B.S. in History	$6,306
2	Utah Valley University	B.A. in History	$6,507
3	Weber State University	Bachelor's in History	$6,557
4	Brigham Young University	B.A. in History	$6,688
5	Southern Utah University	B.A. or B.S. in History	$6,962
6	Utah State University	B.A. or B.S. in History	$9,228
7	University of Utah	Bachelor's in History	$9,620
8	Westminster University	Bachelor's in History	$43,528

Annual in-state tuition and fees. Eight entries, because eight is every school in Utah that teaches the subject. Five of them charge under $7,000, and one of those five is private.

History Education in Utah

Utah is cheap, small, and unusually weighted toward art history.

Five of the state’s eight schools charge under $7,000 a year, which is a wider band of genuinely inexpensive options than most states offer at any level. One of those five is private: Brigham Young University at $6,688, subsidized by its church, sitting below three of the six public universities. Then the list ends abruptly. Westminster University charges $43,528, more than six times the cheapest option, with nothing in between.

The distinctive feature of the catalog is what those 17 programs are. Five of them carry an art history designation, a 29% share that is the highest of any state with 10 or more history programs. Maryland and Minnesota are next at 24%. Three of Utah’s eight schools teach it: the University of Utah takes it to the master’s level, Utah State offers a bachelor’s, and BYU runs a B.A. in Art History and Curatorial Studies. For a student interested in museums or collections, Utah offers more of that per program than anywhere else in the country.

Graduate study is a much shorter list. There are 3 master’s degrees and 1 doctorate in the whole state. Both the doctorate and the only complete three-level ladder belong to the University of Utah. Anyone planning a history Ph.D. in Utah is planning around one department.

Two of the eight schools are R1 universities, Utah and Utah State, which is a high proportion for a state of this size and means the research environment is better than the program count suggests.

Distance study is limited to 3 online programs, all at bachelor’s level, and two of the three are at Utah State. Our guide to online history degrees covers the wider field.

Transfer is one of the cleaner systems in the country. Under Board of Higher Education Policy R470, general education is 30 credit hours, and completing it at any Utah System of Higher Education institution means it transfers as a block to every other one. The receiving university does not re-examine it course by course. No associate degree is required. Utah also runs common course numbering across the system, with general education courses numbered 1010 to 1080, so an equivalent course carries the same number wherever you take it, which makes checking a transfer straightforward before you enroll rather than after. Details are with the Utah System of Higher Education.

Becoming a History Teacher in Utah

Utah’s credential is the Social Studies Composite Endorsement, and it is built differently from any other state on this site. Rather than one exam over a broad subject, the endorsement is divided into 15 separate requirement areas, and the application states that only one demonstration of competency is needed per area.

Each area can be satisfied in one of three ways:

• A named university course, for example History 2700 for U.S. History 1 or Geography 1000 for physical geography.
• A Microcredential Stack, completed and recorded in the state’s MIDAS system. Very few states offer a microcredential route into a content endorsement at all.
• A Praxis subject test, using narrower codes than most states: 5941 for history, 5921 for geography, 5931 for government, 5911 for economics, 5391 for psychology, and 5952 for sociology.

Two things follow from this that matter when you are choosing a degree.

Only 5 of the 15 areas are history. Those are U.S. History 1 and 2, World History 1 and 2, and Utah History. The other ten cover geography, government, political science, economics, psychology twice, sociology, cultural anthropology or archaeology, and social studies methods. A history major covers about a third of this endorsement through the major itself, so the rest has to be planned deliberately, not picked up along the way.

Four areas have no test option at all, so they must be a course or a microcredential: Utah History, political science, cultural anthropology or archaeology, and social studies methods. The Utah History requirement in particular cannot be tested out of, which means every social studies teacher in the state has demonstrated Utah-specific knowledge. If you are moving to Utah with a history degree from elsewhere, that is the gap to close first.

Confirm current requirements with the Utah State Board of Education before choosing a program.

History Careers in Utah

History Careers in Utah

Occupation	Utah jobs	Utah median	vs. U.S. median
Secondary school teachers	11,030	$76,330	+6%
Postsecondary history teachers	140	$81,750	-2%
Archivists	80	$56,660	-12%
Curators	50	$59,910	-6%
Historians	80	$33,840	-56%

Employment and wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, 2025. All five occupations are published for Utah, which is unusual.

Four of these five rows are unremarkable and one is extraordinary, so take them separately.

Classroom teaching is both the biggest employer here and a well-paid one: 11,030 positions at a median $76,330, running 6% ahead of the national figure. Set against tuition that starts at $6,306, that is a genuinely favorable combination and the most important pair of numbers on this page for most readers. Postsecondary history teaching is within 2% of national, curators 6% below, and archivists 12% below. None of those is an outlier.

Then there is the historian row. Utah reports a median of $33,840 for historians, 56% below the national median and the lowest figure for that occupation of any state in the country. The next-lowest states are 40% below, so Utah sits 16 points clear of them.

We report that because it is what the Bureau published, but it deserves a caveat rather than a conclusion. It sits against a state that pays teachers above the national rate and college instructors at roughly the national rate, and it covers only 80 positions in a single occupation code. It is far more likely to reflect what that particular code captures in Utah than to describe the value of history work across the state. If your plan is a job titled historian in Utah, look hard at actual postings before deciding anything. If your plan is teaching, archives, or museums, the other four rows are the relevant ones.

History Resources in Utah

• Utah Historical Society. Check before you travel. The collection is in the middle of a move to the new Museum of Utah at 450 N State Street, opening in 2026, and the society states that services and collection access remain limited while that is under way. In-person research runs by appointment in the Engagement Room, Mondays and Wednesdays only, 9:00 to 13:00. The holdings are worth the planning: manuscripts, maps, photographs, film reels, Utah newspapers, yearbooks, telephone directories, and architectural drawings.
• Utah State Archives and Records Service, 346 South Rio Grande Street, Salt Lake City. A separate agency from the Historical Society, holding the state’s government records, open 8 to 5. All in-person research is by appointment, so email before going instead of turning up.

Frequently Asked Questions