Someone asked about this yesterday and I gave them an answer that they didn't really like, which I'll reproduce in a moment. However, the answer really depends on what you mean by "taking up history". Do you mean taking a few classes or minoring in it in college? Do you mean getting a history degree and then going to law school? Do you mean becoming a secondary school teacher? Do you mean becoming a curator or a librarian or an archivist? Or do you mean getting a history degree and going on to get a Ph.D. with the intention of becoming an academic historian? We have people here who have "taken up history" in all of those roles, so specifying what your career goals are would help us give you more specific advice.
If you're considering going the route that I took, getting a Ph.D. with the goal of becoming an academic historian, I can tell you that it is a very bad idea and that you would be best to focus your efforts elsewhere. Here's what I told the person who asked about this yesterday (slightly edited):
"Your chances of becoming a history professor are very small, because the academic job market is very bad and shows no signs of getting any better. The job market tanked after the 2008 recession and never really recovered to anywhere close to its pre-2008 levels before COVID hit and made the problem even worse than it had been before and the ongoing recession has made sure it's not going to get better anytime soon.
The reason I'm skeptical that it's going to get better is that the bad history job market is a self-perpetuating cycle. People know that the job market is bad, so they don't major in history, which means that history enrollments decline, which means there's less need for history instructors, which means colleges hire fewer professors, which means the job market is bad...you get where this is going.
Combine that with the general devaluation of humanities education and the strangling of higher education budgets by state legislatures, along with the severe overproduction of Ph.D.s by American universities, and you get a completely unsustainable situation. If you get a Ph.D. and start applying for academic jobs, you're not going to be competing just with the Ph.D.s in your cohort, but also with a backlog of several years' worth of Ph.D.s who have been adjuncting or working other jobs while they're applying for every teaching job they can find. Most tenure-track job openings in history get literally hundreds of applicants, and your odds of even getting an interview, much less an offer, are very slim.
For reference, I finished my Ph.D. in 2016, at probably the height of the post-2008 recovery. I applied for around 125 jobs (tenure track, non-tenured, part-time, and non-teaching) and I got three interviews and two offers (one teaching 3/4 time at a Division II school and one that led to my current job as a researcher at a museum). The vast majority of the tenure track jobs go to students from the top 10 or 15 programs, and most of the others will spend years in adjunct hell, stringing together several jobs with no benefits and living at or below the poverty line before either striking gold (rarely) or throwing in the towel and changing careers (far more common).
The other thing to bear in mind is that not only are you very unlikely to get a teaching job, the time you spent earning your Ph.D. incurs an opportunity cost, because that's 5-7 years you spent in school working on a degree that doesn't really qualify you to do anything except teach. That's a big gap in your work experience on your resume, as well as 5-7 years during which you're getting, at best, tuition remission and a low-five-figure grad student stipend, so you're not going to be saving any money or putting anything toward retirement, etc. I finished my Ph.D. pretty quickly (I was 25 when I graduated), got a job about 3 months later, and became a full-time employee with benefits after about 2.5 years. Even then, I was about 8 years behind my friends who made better choices in their education/careers in terms of saving for retirement. I probably won't be able to buy a house until I'm in my 40s. And again, I ended up with just about the best-case scenario for someone in my cohort. And I'll acknowledge up front that it was sheer luck on my part. A chance meeting in an elevator and another chance meeting at a dinner were the things that got my foot in the door for my current job, and even then, I spent 2.5 years with no benefits earning subsistence wages at a job that required a Ph.D. and knowledge of two foreign languages. This is what qualifies as lucky these days. It really is that bad.
I hate to be a debbie downer, but it's better that you hear this up front and make an informed decision: do not get a Ph.D. in history. The statistics that are cited in that post are bleak, but remember that this post was written before COVID, and that things are even worse now. I think the stats now are roughly six Ph.D.s produced for every tenure-track job that opens up, and bear in mind that only a fraction of those tenure-track jobs will be in your area of specialization. From the academic (i.e. research/teaching side), I can tell you that it is not a good thing to do and that you should look elsewhere in your career choices."
If you were thinking of going down some other career route then obviously you can ignore this and hopefully someone will chime in with more relevant advice. I can really only tell you about the route I went down, but I can say from experience that it's not a good idea (and I would imagine that almost everyone else here who has gone down that career path would agree with that statement).
Ah yes, the ‘is it worth it’ question. From my perspective, it depends. Much of my response assumes OP is based in the United States.
A history degree is not necessarily worthless on its own. A friend of mine has a master’s degree but she also worked at the same time for a teaching certificate. Others I knew went into public facing positions working for local and state agencies.
u/Neutrinoh is part right in that college is fancy job training. A history degree can provide training for several things.
Writing. I’ve yet to meet an engineer or a computer programmer that effectively explain what they do in writing. Clear and concise writing is an essential skill for most any job.
Qualitative analysis. Never underestimate the skills required to string together disparate documentary evidence to establish a compelling conclusion.
Beyond the classroom. If teaching is your dream, get that Bachelor’s degree and a teaching certificate. But if you don’t see yourself in the classroom; historians do other jobs. Some work in the National Park Service, some work in libraries, some in museums, and others in the private sector.
For myself, I come from an Indigenous community where two others and I are only history PhD’s in that community. My passion drove me to seek the doctorate as I despised how my community has been written about. I paid for my degrees with a combination of scholarships, teaching assistantships, and fellowships. I did take some modest loans (~11k) but those are paid now.
I teach at a private college preparatory school. I serve on panel of advisors to my states public education department that aims to expand access to education to rural communities. Because of my knowledge, I work with my community’s cultural affairs office to assist with repatriation, reviewing IRB applications, etc…
So, back to the original question, ‘is it worth it?’ It depends. I’d suggest going some of the places I’ve mentioned and talking to some people. Ask an NPS employee what they needed to work their job. Ask a museum employee/curator what their job requires. Check the USAJobs website, you’d be surprised who is hiring people with history degrees.
It really comes down to you. Do you want to invest the time required for a MA or PhD? Can you pay for it through scholarships or do you need loans? What do you want to do for work?
u/sunagainstgold wrote a pretty convincing piece on why pursuing a history doctorate is a bad idea. Now, this was 4 years ago and the user is now a published author (of How to Slay a Dragon, might as well plug it I guess: https://www.amazon.com/How-Slay-Dragon-Fantasy-Middle/dp/1982164115) so maybe her opinion has changed...but I'm guessing not. I assume covid has made things even worse.
Others in this thread have outlined the career challenges in traditional academic paths that focus on history. I cannot dispute what they say. It is a brutal scene.
That said, some knowledge of history is truly necessary in order to make sense of the modern world. What exists now is the way that it is, because of the way that it was. I've known many professionals who lack this knowledge; it limits them.
The degree is useless, but the knowledge is worth having. Take the classes, but find another major. 'Education' is another degree that sometimes gets called a waste of time, but unlike history, a BA in education qualifies you for a teaching license in many states, which can open an entire professional world.
I did a double major in my undergrad— history and women & gender studies. I started an MA in a different field and decided that academia was not for me. After working for a bit in my early-mid twenties I returned to school for an MSW and now I am a therapist.
I found my BA in history to be incredibly fruitful, I was able to hone my critical thinking and analytical skills in a way not many of my current peers, colleagues or friends have. It has given me very unique context about the current state of the world, and I am glad I pursued it.
I have degrees in history. (As well as archival training) It was a very long road but now I am the Archivist-Historian ( actual job title) for a large non-profit. I had plenty of detractors and the money wasn't great for a long time. But I get "to do history " everyday and I'm not a teacher. (Not something I have the patience for)
The best advice along with those who caution against a PhD is to double major. Do history AND something else. What that is can be up to you.
If you really want to pursue higher education in history, doing humanities or classics or linguistics can really, really help because then you can read more scholarship in the field [obviously the linguistics major should be adjacent to the region you're most interested in - East Asian languages if you're interested in Chinese/Japanese/Korean history, Latin or Greek/German/French for medieval Europe, so on and so forth]. Classics can also give you a background in Latin which can help if you want to study law. If you want to teach at the secondary level, do history + education. You'll be able to get jobs quite easily in education if you do that. If you do it right you can even do what I did and go teach internationally and actually get paid a good amount of money instead of the horrible salaries teachers often endure in the US. You could also do Museum Studies at some schools, or Library Science and pursue either of those routes.
The point is - you can do history + a lot of different fields and your chances will be better, you'll likely be more employable, regardless of what you choose to do.
History is absolutely not a waste of a degree and is very applicable to a career if you are willing to teach high school. There is currently a teacher shortage especially in rural areas and so it's not hard to get a job if you are a bit flexible on location. In order to teach you'll need to be certified look up your states rule for teacher certification every state is different but you don't usually need a second degree just an endorsement in the subject you want to teach. This often stakes the form of a year combo of training and student teaching. Most teaching jobs are pretty decent and while they sometimes have a low sticker pay they usually provide good benefits and a pension as well as being one of the higher paying jobs in some rural towns with a very low cost of living.
If your heart is set on university it is possible to get a job teaching overseas at an Asian university, thought this would not be a tenured or research position, and you'd likely only be teaching introductory level classes. Still you'll most likely get a provided apartment, insurance and subsidized food so you'll be able to save a fair chunk of change.
Finally, a bit out of left field but you can apply for the US Army's Officer Candidate school, or do ROTC in university and commission as an Army officer a bit unusual but the Army doesn't care what degree you have. Air force ROTC is also an option but not Airforce Officer candidate school as they don't normally take liberal arts degrees.
A History degree opens up more paths then you might think and is not a dead end. But have a plan for what you want to do with it. This is really true for any degree. The joy of learning is good and all but a degree is an expensive investment and you should have an eye on the future. If your not interested in the things it sets you up for (and this is by no means an exhaustive list) consider a minor in History, or a double major in something else.
You can be a historian without the academic path like everyone advised. The knowledge is worth it, but it doesn’t pay the bills. I’ve transitioned to the medical field and the knowledge has been priceless in healthcare, but I would advise mixing critical thinking skills from history with other annoyingly job related fields…