I got a MA in Public History (anthropology was BA but history would also have been a good option) and am a museum curator. Love history and learning but teaching definitely wasn’t for me and I really wanted to create things and develop opportunities to share history with the public.

Public History is pretty useful in the museum field as it is about archival management, historic interpretation for public spaces, artifact preservation, researching and reviewing historic resources, and a lot of other practical things.

I did not specialize in any specific historic topic/era but am an “expert” in researching and interpreting info and understanding laws as they apply to the field ( copyright, privacy restrictions, NAGPRA, ...). For me, that is great because every day is different and I am constantly learning about a wide variety of topics.

It is a competitive field but is also growing really fast. Lots of retirements as the baby boomers were the first Public Historians and the future looks bright for people entering the field who are also tech-savvy (digitization equipment, interactive displays, online resources, etc). A BA gets you started, there will be internships, MA degree is increasingly important as there are just so many folks with BAs but this is a really practical degree that is useful for archives, museums, cultural centers, libraries/special collections, and governments with city, county, and state typically being the most stable.

If you love history and don’t want to go academic, public history is a valuable degree. Every place I have worked stress that learning the specific history of their focus is the easy part. What they want is someone who knows how to learn, examine, and interpret.

Hi, as an eighteen year old who was recently accepted into the University of Wollongong (which is ranked among the top 2% of universities in the world and something like the top 15% in historical education)for a Bachelor of Arts - Majoring in history, I had asked these questions myself to the gentleman who interviewed me and he laid out first and foremost several education paths with the most common being:

-High school teaching, which, not sure how it works in other countries also requires a Master of Secondary Education.

-Getting your PhD and being a professor, author or something of the like.

-Tutoring, using your university level knowledge or history to teach high school/university students privately.

-Oral history or working in a museum, there was a certain word which I can’t remember that was used to describe jobs within this industry

He also mentioned that studying history will grant you several key skills that employers are constantly craving, such as that of being able to comprehensively perform research tasks, construct cohesive and logical arguments, etc. My cousin for example did a Masters Degree in history and is now working as a journalist. Having a history level degree may not automatically entail a history related career but will enable you to perform well in many jobs with the research and writing skills it grants you.

I'm an academic advisor at a university and I have a BA in History. I've been an advisor for 15+ years and only recently got a Masters in my field. I'm looking at earning a second Masters degree in World War II Studies at Arizona State.

Some of my students who have graduated with their BA degrees in History have gone to law school, gotten their teaching certificates, and gone into History graduate programs. I also have a student who got her Masters in Library & Info Sciences and currently works as a librarian. Basically, the so-called "soft skills" related to writing and critical thinking that employers are interested in are ones that are gained through the History major, and employers are always looking for those. They'll teach you the rest.