Bachelor's · earnings grade

Is a History degree worth it?

Graduates earn a median $30,409 two years after finishing, more than 17% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 1,267 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.

The verdict on the money

Financially it is a slower start than most majors at this level — worth planning your borrowing around.

Median earnings $30,409 2 years after finishing · per graduate

Typical range $25,856–$33,604 middle half of US programmes

Over no degree — vs $39,520 high-school median

Graduates a year 23,955 1,267 programmes

Where a History degree pays best US programmes ranked on their own graduates' median earnings two years out.

#	University	1 yr out	2 yrs out	3 yrs out	Graduates/yr
1	Amherst College cost & debt at this university →	$43,271	$74,576	$84,030	28
2	University of Pennsylvania cost & debt at this university →	$50,380	$53,775	$58,114	54
3	Duke University cost & debt at this university →	$45,091	$52,941	not published	45
4	Bates College cost & debt at this university →	not published	$51,273	$55,661	16
5	Dartmouth College cost & debt at this university →	$42,685	$50,856	$62,107	41
6	Rice University cost & debt at this university →	not published	$49,840	$61,295	17
7	Harvard University cost & debt at this university →	$50,411	$49,644	$60,343	161
8	Williams College cost & debt at this university →	$40,036	$49,464	$44,771	55
9	The University of Texas at Dallas cost & debt at this university →	$33,516	$48,041	$54,621	32
10	Texas Christian University cost & debt at this university →	not published	$47,260	not published	26
11	Southern Methodist University cost & debt at this university →	$35,802	$47,260	$50,428	23
12	New York University cost & debt at this university →	$45,990	$47,260	$43,232	82

What this figure does and does not tell you

Two medians are worth separating. $30,409 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $29,685 is what the typical programme reports, counting a class of twenty the same as a class of two thousand. The weighted figure is higher here, which means the larger programmes in this field are the better-paying ones.

It is the median of what real graduates of this exact major earned, taken from tax records two years after they completed. It is not a starting salary, not an average of job adverts, and not a projection. The median bachelor's major in this dataset reports $36,497, so History sits below the middle by $6,088.

Two years is early in a career. Fields with long training pipelines — medicine, law, research — look weaker at this point than they will at ten, while trades and applied technical fields peak sooner. Read a low figure in a long-pipeline subject as "slow start", not "bad degree".

There is no debt figure here on purpose. The Department of Education publishes earnings by field of study but not borrowing, so nobody can honestly tell you the debt of a specific major. Debt is published per institution — that is where our university cost pages carry it.

History at other levels

Master's — $39,927 (F)

Scholarships for History students

Whatever the subject pays, the money you do not borrow is the money you keep.

150 Fully Funded PhD Degree Scholarships for International Stu... Richard Rogers Fellowship Residencies at Harvard Graduate Scho... 12 Fully-funded Birkbeck Postgraduate Research Scholarships in... Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Toronto in Canada, 20... School of Philosophy and Art History Research Scholarship Sche... Pears Foundation PhD Scholarships at University of Sussex in U...

See all History scholarships →

Study History Programmes listed on ScholarshipsAds.

History of Religions — Stockholm University PhD in Economic History — Lund University Early Modern History — Uppsala University American History — University of Cambridge PhD in History (University of Cambridge) — University of Cambridge History — University of Cambridge

Majors that pay more at this level Closest first — useful if you are still choosing.

Neurobiology and Neurosciences — $29,866 Human Development, Family Studies — $29,978 Nutrition Sciences — $30,699 Rehabilitation — $30,771 Romance Languages — $31,133 Human Biology — $31,189

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History: the questions people ask

How much do History graduates earn?

The median bachelor's graduate earns $30,409 two years after finishing (weighting each programme by how many students it graduates), across 557 US programmes that publish the figure. One year out it is $28,939.