So, What Are You Going to Do With That?

Matthew Zang

Whenever I mention to someone new that I plan on completing a degree in history, I always get the concerned question of, “what are you going to do with that?” While an extremely valid question, it gets old after about the 50th person has asked you. There is a very common misconception that students that major in history tend to either teach high school or work in a library. In reality though, History is a very broad field to study and can be used in multiple, non-historical, areas. To answer the question of what one can do with this degree, though, we have to understand what it is we are actually discussing.

When earning a degree in History, it’s not simply about memorizing names and dates and then regurgitating them on a test. The degree program teaches one how to analyze documents and events in history and determine the underlying message or ideas in them. This gives the student an extremely good grasp on analysis and synthesis by analyzing primary and secondary sources. This means that a student could look at a set of data and find minuscule patterns or a memo written by a corporation fifty years ago and find ways that the current administration of that corporation could improve upon areas.

I won’t delve into every single job that students of history find themselves in but the many fields that those jobs fall under are; Education, Research, Communications, Business, Advocates, and Information Managers. One of the most surprising fields to me is the field of Business. Drawing on the second data analysis point, many historians actually find themselves working as Market Analysts because of how well they can examine a source for its authenticity and biases.

So we learned that the study of history is still a very useful degree and that most historians don’t end up in high schools or libraries. Then I find that the answer to the question, “What can you do with a History degree?” can be answered with, “Quite a lot actually!”

Citations:
https://www.historians.org/jobs-and-professional-development/career-resources/careers-for-history-majors
https://www.historians.org/jobs-and-professional-development/career-resources/careers-for-students-of-history/careers-for-students-of-history-introduction