Why Study History?

Marcus Collins, Peter N. Stearns

• Publisher: London Publishing Partnership
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781913019044
• eBook ISBN:
  9781913019068
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Considering studying history at university? Wondering whether a history degree will get you a good job, and what you might earn? Want to know what it's actually like to study history at degree level? This book tells you what you need to know. Studying any subject at degree level is an investment in the future that involves significant cost. Now more than ever, students and their parents need to weigh up the potential benefits of university courses. That's where the Why Study series comes in. This series of books, aimed at students, parents and teachers, explains in practical terms the range and scope of an academic subject at university level and where it can lead in terms of careers or further study. Each book sets out to enthuse the reader about its subject and answer the crucial questions that a college prospectus does not.

Chapter 1

Getting started: making the most of history

History is, or can be, immensely practical, and it opens a wide variety of career doors. It also enlightens life.

By all means study history. [It] is an endless source of fascination and very good company when the world seems to be going to hell around you.1

That’s what a chief executive in an American utility company had to say about why people should study history. He majored in history as an undergraduate and found it directly relevant to his successful career in management:

Software changes even more rapidly than computer chips, but determining what is changing rapidly, what is changing slowly, and how people respond to the pace of change requires a particular skill-set – and these are the kinds of questions addressed squarely by historians.

A successful lawyer, who also studied history at university, agrees:

In a world of rapid economic change, the ability to grasp and explain the meaning of change is a skill of significant value in the marketplace.

He notes history’s value in ‘creating openness to the ideas of others with different experiences, information and views’ so that it ‘provides support for social responsibility, engaged citizenship and the institutions of democratic societies’. When asked to answer the question addressed by this book – why study history? – he replied:

A better question would be, why not study history? 2

The basic argument

This book lays out the ways in which studying history provides intellectual value, enhances citizenship and prepares students for a range of careers. It discusses the principal fields of historical study at universities today, outlines what to look for in choosing particular history programmes and offers a guide on how to make the transition from school to college. The intent is to explore history’s rich promise while providing a practical guide for students and their advisors. It’s designed to help university applicants write their personal statements and prepare for their admissions interviews.

There are three main reasons to study history:

1. Many students simply like it. They may like it because they were exposed to historical stories growing up, or because they had a beguiling history teacher in high school, or because they find trying to figure out what life was like in the past intriguing. It’s not always clear why one likes a subject, but preferences should not be discounted. As this book will show, students who choose to follow their passions into university are likely to be rewarded by the exceptionally high standards of teaching provided by history faculties.
2. It’s a great way to think about the human condition and get an active sense of why the current climate is the way that it is. Comparing the present with the past and charting major processes of change and continuity builds a vital understanding of how people think and behave, and how previous patterns have evolved. These skills are becoming increasingly important in today’s ‘post-truth’ society.
3. It prepares students for a wide variety of careers, and recent surveys demonstrate that these careers yield competitive salaries and impressive levels of job satisfaction. The skills developed by studying history are in high demand, across an array of professions and occupations.

This book will pay a great deal of attention to reasons (2) and (3), which should sit at the core of any student’s decision as to whether (and where) to study history at university.

The jobs scene

To begin, let’s deal with a few common misconceptions; more elaborate explanations will follow in later chapters. In recent years, especially since the Great Recession of 2008, many applicants to university have assumed that the only really safe career choice is a degree in one of the fabled STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields, and that a subject like history doesn’t cut it as a practical option. Now, there’s nothing wrong with studying STEM subjects, but the assumptions about history simply aren’t true. Average incomes for history graduates don’t just compare well with those who studied degrees in the arts, humanities and social sciences. They match the incomes of graduates in some scientific fields and aren’t far behind those of business graduates. Those who progress from a history degree into management or law, as many do, can earn substantial salaries.

So, why do misapprehensions abound in the jobs domain? One reason is that in difficult economic times it’s easy to overestimate the value of ‘practical’ degrees and underestimate the value of degrees like history that lead to diverse career paths. While history prepares students for a range of professions, many of these do not follow as directly from their degree as is true in, say, engineering, and this complicates generalizations about jobs. Lots of history graduates carve out careers in fields where you wouldn’t expect to find historians, but where the skills developed as part of a history degree are, in fact, highly valued.

Chapter 3 offers precise data on salaries and job satisfaction, and shows why choosing to focus on history is an entirely practical decision. Other parts of the book will explain how to evaluate a history programme, including its resources for career advice and placements. The next chapter explores the varied skills that studying history develops. This is a key reason why history graduates do so well in a disparate job market, and a vital point for history students to remember when they are explaining why they are job-ready. These students have reason to be proud of the various ways they contribute to society and the economy as well as the personal rewards that result from their work.

The limits of school history

Besides the jobs issue, many of the chapters in this book confront another potential area of confusion: the relationship between history at school and at university level. It is vital to note the success of many school history courses – a success that has surely motivated many of the readers of this book. Many secondary teachers are immensely knowledgeable and enthusiastic, and they help produce students who are eager for more. It’s also true, however, th...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Praise for "Why Study History?"
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Cover Image Information
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1. Getting Started: Making the Most of History
• PART I – SKILLS AND JOBS: THE RESULTS OF HISTORICAL STUDY
• Chapter 2. Meeting Needs: The Reasons to Study History
• Chapter 3. Careers for History Graduates
• PART II – HOW HISTORY IS STRUCTURED
• Chapter 4. History in Time and Place: The Common Units of Historical Study
• Chapter 5. The History Advantage: The Dynamic Range of Historical Study
• PART III – STUDYING HISTORY AT COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY
• Chapter 6. Evaluating History Programmes
• Chapter 7. Learning History as an Undergraduate
• PART IV – HISTORY AS A PUBLIC GOOD
• Chapter 8. In Public Service: Why Society Needs History and Historians
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• About the authors