Alright, really, what CAN you do with a degree in history?

Write some books?

I know of a couple of people who went to law school after getting a bachelor’s in history. If you’re interested in being a librarian, in my opinion, I think it could be a good step before an MLS.

And if you go to my former high school, you get to be the football coach! All but one of the male history teachers were coaches.

In the last 30 years, there has been a huge cultural shift in pedagogical discourse and in society in general to look for positive, directly assessable instrumental outcomes.

There are a number of reasons for this – most notably the shift to knowledge economies in Western nations driven by the rise of countries where cheap labour is abundant, such as India and China, and the idea that the economy is what a country is all about – a result of Western capitalism. The ultimate goal of education under the current model is to serve the economy.

Humanities, on the other hand, are not directly about producing skills required by the economy; the outcomes are not instrumental. Nevertheless, an understanding of the society in which one lives is not informed by an understanding of maths or physics or engineering or biology. It is informed by examining the artifacts of the society in light of the cultural constructs that led to them, be they literature, TV, movies, music, social movements or, frankly, practically anything else.

The value that is placed on an area of enquiry is determined by the society in which such enquiry is practised. I would ask you to reverse the question and ask what a trained historian can’t do.

As an example, why would a trained software engineer be better placed to understand the American independence movement or the trends and turning points that led to the revolution, the declaration of independence and the framing of the constitution? More importantly, why shouldn’t there be people who are experts in the topic?

They might not “produce” in the strict sense of the word, but any society that stops trying to understand itself is not a society in which I would like to live.

If we accept that there is no role for the attempt to understand the ineffable, we are further along the road to the Brave New World than I think any of us would be comfortable with.

@the100thmonkey Holy cow… Ok, so I’m not asking if you agree with the way it is now. I just want to know what career options there are for those with history degrees.

Become a corporate historian

@WestRiverrat What’s that?

Some companies hire people to write or update their corporate histories.

http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/feb2007/bs20070212_232786.htm

@papayalily: Sorry!

Again, it might be better to think in terms of what you can’t do with one!

At the bachelor’s level, you’re not really limited by very much – many companies (in the UK, at least) will accept practically any BA for entry into their graduate programs.

@the100thmonkey True. But I meant in the history field. Not just a degree, but making a career out of it. Like an English major becoming a novelist or an editor or a journalist or an English professor, not just a guy with a job who got a BA in English.

Would you like fries with that?

Get a useful master’s degree afterward? That’s snotty, I know.

@essieness Yes, it is, but I got a giggle. But then you get your Ph.D. and then… What?

@papayalily I really don’t have a good answer for this. It’s sad, but the liberal arts degrees are just becoming useless in this day and age. I wish the economy weren’t so bad, or the arts were more highly valued, but unfortunately, a business degree is where it’s at anymore.

@essieness I know a lot of the humanities are becoming useless – at least as a direct path to a career. At least with psychology, you can become a psychologist. But how does one go about using a history degree to make money and sustain oneself?

Work in a museum? That’s what I wanted to do with my life when I was thinking about majoring in history.

Teach (if you wanted a prestigious job, try teaching for a big-shot university or Ivy League) or work at a historical institution. You’ll want to double major if you want to do anything else. You may not ever make 6 figures, but you’ll have knowledge that many other people do not, and you might be one of the few who actually understand why events repeat themselves and see them coming. The rest of us engineers will be blinded by numbers and progress.

Be an informed citizen? Teach? Write? Journalism? Television? Radio? Politics?

Whatever you want.
I have a friend who got a degree in history and then went to medical school.

I was actually majoring in History and actually found that its tough to get a career that is looking for a degree like that unless you are trying to teach or work in the library..
half way through it I had to change the major, you can major in something like business and still have major history classes which is what I am doing..
I work as an accountant but I wanted to have something more, so I made sure I took courses (electives) which were in writing, which I love and in history.. My favorite.. School is too expensive and so its important to really get involved with where you want to be…

Military historians have pretty interesting careers outside of teaching. My little sister just earned her PhD in history and now teaches at West Point. I’ve seen her in action and it looks like a hell of a rewarding career.

I was a history major. There’s no reason you can’t take a few business courses, either during or after college, and market yourself as someone with impeccable research, analysis, writing and verbal communication skills. You might feel like the odd man out at first in a business, but that will actually help you in the long run (i.e., your last job—but not your first one). You can work in any field or industry where you need to be able to digest and master a large quantity of data or material and then apply that material to a given situation—this is really what law, medicine, or other graduate school programs truly prepare you to do, but just within specific niches. You just need to become a consultant in something and then build from there, and you’ll need to be a bit lucky in getting someone to bring you on board and then mentor you, but you’ll be fine. I really think all the hatred towards liberal arts/humanities majors is completely unfounded. You don’t need to teach or go to law or business school to validate your passion for and expertise in the world’s most underrated and understudied subject; you just need to examine your interests and talents, and figure out how to “monetize” them, and maybe take an accounting or programming course or two.

@selcouthstranger And jobs actually relating to history?? I’m not interested in jobs that utilize skills you learned while getting that degree, but jobs where knowledge about Bad King John’s bathing habits and the like are actually used.

That’d be obscure research on those time periods. Research positions.

No one, except the geekiest people, will pay you for that knowledge unless you market yourself and publish papers, though anyone feel free to prove me wrong.

Archivists and corporate historians, though you have to limit your field immensely.

Analyze current world affairs, challenges and problems. Most deeper analyses require excellent knowledge of our history. For example:

What are the root causes for

a) September 11 and other terrorist attacks?
b) the widespread bitterness and anger in the Muslim world, for example when millions take to the streets because of a few (harmless) Danish cartoons in some newspaper?

Is it just the ongoing Middle East conflict? Is it Western politics? Western economic power?

Hamed Abdel-Samad is a German-Egyptian political scientist and author who has also worked for the UNESCO in Geneva, the department of Islamic Studies at the University of Erfurt, Germany, and the Department of Modern History at the University of Munich. He’s helping the German government to improve the integration of immigrants and also find strategies to reduce Islamist fundamentalism. See my recent question

http://www.fluther.com/102099/egyptian-german-political-scientist-predicts-the-demise-of-the-muslim-world-/

Historians help shape the future !

I have someone who works for me who has a BA and MA in history. She does a good job doing research, analysis and writing for me.

I have a History degree and I work for the government. The requirement for my job is a Bachelor’s and so I qualified with a degree and with passing the civil service test. I am a caseworker for Dept of Social Services, and in my county (which does pay well as it is one of the wealthiest counties in the country) I make about $60,000.

Someone told me once that employers like a history degree because you need the ability to do research when you take history, so having such degree shows an ability to do research, audits, etc.

You can jot phone numbers down on the back of it…

So teach, go into another field, and keep notes. Yeah, that’s what I thought…

@papayalily If you’re “not interested in jobs that utilize skills you learned while getting that degree,” you will have a hard time finding a job, yes.

@selcouthstranger You misunderstand me. I’m not saying you shouldn’t use those skills, just that I wasn’t asking about jobs where you use the skills but none of the knowledge. I’m aware that the humanities can help you be successful at any job you have, but that’s not quite the same thing as getting a degree in history and then becoming a historian. Or getting a degree in anthropology and then spending the rest of your life on digs.

@papayalily No, I don’t.

You asked “what CAN you do with a degree in history?” I answered that question. You apparently meant to ask “what are jobs which I can get which utilize the knowledge, but not the skills, which I have acquired through my history degree.” Those that limit their list of potential jobs and careers to strictly the knowledge they acquired through education stay in academia. If you don’t want to stay in academia, which bears no similarity to jobs in the real world, you will need to expand your knowledge and skill base, or you simply will not advance.

@selcouthstranger Please don’t tell me what I meant to ask. You aren’t in my head. Maybe I originally phrased my question poorly, but I think I more than made it clear what I was asking in the following posts. I didn’t mean to say that skills aren’t important, just that they aren’t relevant to this particular query.