What to do with a BA in History?

Hi all… sorry if this is IMHO material, mods please feel free to move it if necessary. I’m giving serious consideration to this degree program at the University of Central Florida. My dilemma: I believe the program would be immensely interesting, but I have no earthly idea what I would do with the degree after graduation.

Does anyone out there have a BA in History or know someone who does? Are you employed in a field where that degree is relevant? Any and all contributions are welcome.

Thanks.

This belongs in IMHO.

As to the OP…your basic choices are either teaching or graduate school. A BA in History is fun and informative, but essentially useless in the real world. Either use it as a stepping stone to law school, or get your teaching credentials and join the wonderful world of Secondary Education. Otherwise, the only thing you need to know with that degree on your resume is how to say “Do you want fries with that?”

Must resist urge to quote Avenue Q

Basicly what silenus said. I got my B.A. in history because I enjoy history and in case my school psychology plan falls though I can always teach.

-Wolfian, B.A. Psychology B.A. History, Syracuse University Class of 2005

My uncle got his BA in History from a highly ranked university. Graduated with honors, no less. After several years working at radio shack (or somewhere like that), he decided to start taking night school classes. He’s now a successful computer programmer. YMMV.

You could write-- fiction, non-fiction, and then there are good textbooks needed.

Movies and tv often need someone to make sure they’re getting a period piece correct.

Museums setting up and maintaining collections, art consulting (tracking who owned what, when, where, helping determine forgeries, etc.), you could even help archeologists. Was Indiana Jones a history prof.? So you might not be Indiana Jones exactly, but you get what I mean. What show was I watching where they employed historians to determine likely dig sites? Of course, these jobs are not exactly growing on trees. There’s a reason my cousin is a massage therapist, and not employed by a museum. My dad used his degree to teach.

This is headed for IMHO, I’m sure, but meanwhile . . . .

Bzzt. Thanks for playing. If someone with a B.A. in History ends up working fast food for a living, it’s a lot more to do with the person than the degree.

I’ve said this several times before, but I’ll keep saying it as long as I live: a college education isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be) about credentialization, it should be about learning to think and communicate. A college education should teach you to absorb, understand, and think critically about new information, connect that with existing knowledge, synthesize new insights about it, and communicate the results of that process effectively to others. Period. The nominal subject matter is just grist for the mill and is ultimately irrelevant.

Yes, many people do obtain college degrees primarily to master a particular body of knowledge and specific skills in highly technical fields. These are the same people you later find whining and complaining about the fact that their skills are no longer in demand as companies obtain the same thing from overseas contract labor at 1/20th the cost.

I have a B.A. in English from a small liberal arts college. For the last 15 years, I’ve worked in a variety of positions in the software industry, including technical support, QA/testing, product management, and consulting. In my current position, I design and execute large-scale implementations of an enterprise software product, primarily at Fortune 1000-level companies. I’ve had exactly 10 days of formal technical training in those fifteen years. Nevertheless, I’ve been able to master a variety of operating systems, software products, networking technologies, etc., because I learned in college how to identify the information that is relevant to my current situation, process that information quickly, connect it with things I already know, think critically about it, develop effective solutions to the problems at hand, and communicate that to my customers and colleagues. The technical world in which I work has changed utterly several times over during my career (MS-DOS and 300 baud modems were the order of the day when I started out), but I’ve always been able to adapt.

The other thing I’ve always done is to keep working and not scorn particular types of work as being beneath me. My first job after dropping out of graduate school was as a proofreader at an advertising agency. The things I learned about print production in that position led to my next position at a prepress firm, which led to my first job in software, doing tech support for one of our vendors. I’ve worked my way up to vice president and even acting president of a division of a publicly traded company, and then had to start over doing tech support elsewhere when that business evaporated. I’ve been laid off and had to subsist on doing odd-job research projects for neighbors and acquaintances, etc. But I’ve always been able to recover and advance by focusing on the general abilities I acquired in the course of my education, not the specific technical facts and skills I picked up in the course of my career. That’s what you do with a college education in any subject.

If it’s true that the nominal subject matter is irrelevant, when compared to the overarching communications/cognitive skills that one learns in the process of gleaning this subject matter, then why not gain those vital skills learning a subject matter that has a higher degree of marketability in the real world?

That sounds crassly commercialistic, but I think it’s easy to avoid making certain hard decisions about a post-college career if one spends four years learning something that has no real use in the world outside of academia (cognitive skills notwithstanding).

(p.s. I got my BA in Religion…I’m now working on a Ph.D. in English…I’m therefore one of the most useless people in the world…)

Well, just being a writer requires resources, an income. Also, good luck getting a publishing contract for a textbook without a PhD in the relevant field of history. Many history textbooks now are, in fact, actually written not just by an individual PhD, but by a group of PhDs, each working on his or her own area of expertise. I have three large history textbooks on my shelves: one was written by two people; another by five; and the last by six people, all tenured professors with PhDs.

You’re very unlikely to learn about period costuming and similar, movie-related stuff in an udergraduate history degree.

Well, it is certainly true that many historians find work in museums and other similar institutions, but even this often also requires some graduate work in museum curatorship or archiving. And if you want to get into the art world, then you would probably need to specialise in art history.

Indiana Jones was a professor of archeology, IIRC. He was also a FICTIONAL CHARACTER!!!

In most universities, archeology programs are quite separate from the main history department, even though there might be some connections with Ancient History or some other area. In my university, for example, archeological training is carried out in the department of Near Eastern Studies.

Which is more interesting to you? Which has more effect on how you live your life outside of work? A lot of people get really fired up about the theory and practice of computer programming. For some, it’s economics. For others, it’s biology or chemistry. For me, it could have been any number of things; I happened to pick English lit. There’s nothing wrong with picking a field with immediate marketability, if it energizes you. As long as it’s something that excites you enough to keep you interested and motivated for four years, go for it. The problem is that a lot of students, and a lot of institutions, focus on accumulating a specific set of skills and knowledge in order to maximize their immediate earning potential, without considering what the effect will be on their long-term prospects.

Odd. Isn’t it usually under the auspices of the Anthropology department (but perhaps with threads to other departments or colleges)?

You’re interested in history, correct? Here’s my advice:

  1. Do not major in history. Instead, major in a “hard science” where you’ll learn skills that are (presumably) in demand.

  2. Study history as a hobby.

I’ve got a history major and have turned it into an asset when applying for jobs. Rather than saying that you have a wide knowledge of [insert specialty], mention that you have research skills that none of your peers will have. Instead of saying that you can learn to read Olde English, tell them that your research required you to learn skills that aren’t part of a normal person’s skill set and that you coordinated your research based on documents that less than x% of people in the world understand.

The best part is - you’re not even lying, nor spinning anything. I’ve found that telling people that a) I know how to learn, b) I know how to think and c) I actually like sifting through tons of data (and have the patience to do it) is invaluable.

It also helps if you wrote your honors thesis on pro wrestling. I don’t know why, it just does.

It’s simple really.

DING DING DING!

It amazes how much people still insist that one should major in one’s vocation. I majored in English. I’m a photographer and legal assistant. My best friend majored in History. He’s a photojournalist. Another photojournalist I know majored in Music; yet another in chemical engineering (I guess I should run in wider circles.) I never had any intention of becoming an English teacher. I graduated with an English degree because 1) it was the quickest way out of school after having changed majors twice and 2) because most prospective employers in generalized fields don’t give a rat’s ass what your degree is in, as long as you have some sort of college education. Frankly, in my 10 years out of (expensive) Northwestern University, I’ve never once been asked anything about my degree.

I mean, hell, there are vocational degrees like journalism, for instance, but every year, invariably, some famous journo would come speak at Medill (NU’s School of Journalism) and encourage the eager-eyed future reporters to major in anything but journalism. It’s something you learn on the job, at internships; has little to do with your degree.

College is not a vocational school.

A PDF entitled “What You Can Do With A History Major”

Here you go.

My undergrad degree (and my grad work) is in History. Specifically 20th century Latin America and Africa.

Out of school I parleyed it into a job with contractor who worked for USAID. Paid off. Then I went into publishing.

I understand where you all are coming from when you tout the ‘practical’ aspects of college choices. But I always favored doing what you were interested in. Life isn’t some game with an ending but a task to be enjoyed. Do what you want and enjoy. Let the rest happen.

I’ve known FAR too many people who chose a major for ‘practical’ reasons and ended up as unhappy drones. They have a skill and a secure job but they don’t enjoy it. Blech.

In short, the skills you acquire in a history degree can help you get that sort of work (analysis, statistics, research and writing, etc) if that’s what you’re interested in. Plenty of success stories out there. I agree with rackensack that a person with a history degree who ends up flipping burgers is more about themself than the degree.

Hell, in many areas an undergraduate degree is just a working card. Having one (any major) means you get to work at an office. Real specialization requires a graduate degree.

History is a broad, respected arts degree, I don’t think you’ll go too far wrong with it. Chances are 99:1 you won’t be needing the specifics of the degree in your future employment, but its all about the wider learning and thinking that goes on at college, as others have pointed out.

What I would give huge consideration to is whereabouts you want to do this history degree. The esteem with which different universities are held in varies enormously, as I’m sure you know. Pull out all the stops to get into the best college that your circumstances permit. (I went to college in the UK, when there were no financial constraints whatsoever on your choice of university, so I don’t really know how admissions work in US universities.)

Here’s my plan…

Get my History AA at the local Community College. Once I do that, transfer to CSU system and get my BA in History, minoring either in Criminal Justice or Military Studies (not sure yet).

Once I do that, look into law school. I’m interested in the law, I love history.

I currently work as a Computer Operator… my job pays the bills, but I don’t have much interest, and there’s no future in what I do. My only requirement in going to school (at 30! Agh!) was that I end up with a degree in somethign I enjoy and the possibility of better paying work. Doesn’t make much sense to me to get $30K+ in debt in school loans and such and end up making less than I make right now.

It is absolute nonsense that one “can’t do anything” with a degree in history/political science/philosophy/English/whatever. Yes, it is only common sense that if you are interested in working with computers, it helps to study about computers; and if you’re interested in medicine, it helps to study biology, and so on. But if one enjoys history, college is one of the few times in someone’s life in which they are free to pursue whatever studies that are most interesting to them.

Let me run down a few of the jobs that by schoolmates who studied history or political science now have: I work in foreign policy here in the Nation’s Capital; two friends are now studying for doctorates in history; another is an editor at a pretty well-known monthy magazine; one went to law school and is about to start a clerkship with a Federal judge; an old friend works in intelligence; one is on the management track with a major defense contractor; another is finishing a prestigeous fellowship in Tokyo writing on a broad array of foreign policy topics; an acquantence went on to get a masters in public health and is fighting AIDS in a troubled African country; one fellow is a consultant at a firm that designs warehouses; one guy ended up working in sales for a software company; and another is at a famous research institute doing work on homeland security and cyber security efforts.

The common thread among all these folks is not that they got their job because they knew a lot about the Founding Fathers or the Battle of Cannae, but that they were interested in their school work, so they did pretty well in their studies, got good grades (which made it easier to find a job right out of college), and were motivated to succeed. I also know fellow students who did not do well in school and have foundered since: one fellow history student ended up in drug rehab, another has flunked out of law school, and a third has failed to find a job as a university professor. It would be silly to blame those poor outcomes on the fact that they studied history. Obviously, there are other factors at work here.

I should also point out that in my current position, I use the knowledge I gained studying political science/international relations and diplomatic history nearly every day.

If you are interested in the general types of jobs listed above, or the ones that pulykamell linked to, studying history is literally as good as studying any other subject under the sun. My one piece of advice, however is to also study a language if you are at all interested in international relations, diplomacy, or international business. A HARD language, like Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, or something like that, and don’t stop studying it until you can speak it very well, even if you are getting Cs in it. Your employment value will skyrocket, and you’ll laugh at all the others who studied two years of French or Spanish and then gave up, and now can’t even place an order at Taco Bell.

Oh yeah, one other thing: virtually nobody cares what your bachelors degree is in after about five years in the workforce.

Ravenman, BA International Relations, MSc History of International Relations

Let me second (or third) what folks here say about the irrationality of people thinking they need to major in the field of their future vocation. If you are in a liberal arts program that’s simply wrong. You go to school to, in essence, learn to be a better person, to think more widely about the world around you and your place in the world. Studying history will do that. If you want to go to school to study a vocation, you’re better off going to ITT Tech or DeVry. Why waste your money on a four-year college?

Most jobs that I’ve encountered don’t give a good goddam about your college major. They simply want to know that you graduated. I have a history major and haven’t had any trouble finding work. In fact, I started work two days after I graduated and have never been unemployed a day in my life. One of my friends was a history major and, until recently, worked in the White House.

Don’t worry about whether or not you’ll find a job with a history major. As someone said above, if you can only find a crappy job when you leave college, then that’s a reflection on you, not your major.

Well speaking for myself, I became an Army officer, retired early, bounced around a bit, ended up in Saudi Arabia. I have had a blast. As they say, YMMV.