<p>My daughter says she would like to work for an NGO or the civil service and travel. Is History a good thing to study? I am asking this because when I asked her history teacher what kind of jobs someone could do with a history degree other than teach she just blinked and said,"I don't know, teach I suppose."</p>
<p>A history degree provides an education in the pure sense of the word. People with history degrees do everything from attending law school to working in marketing to teaching to journalism. If history is what your daughter is interested in it is a fine major that will keep many doors open for her when she is ready to choose a career.</p>
<p>History is a fine major for those interests. My son (who sounds similar) decided to do international relations which adds some other courses into the mix.</p>
<p>There are all kinds of NGOs----environmental, health, refugee, economic development, human rights, and so on. What particular field interests you daughter? Is there a particular world region that interests her?</p>
<p>Yes. A History major is fine for that.</p>
<p>Most people don’t end up with jobs that match their major, at least not yet, despite the increasingly vocational goals of college education for many.</p>
<p>History majors learn to research, analyze, write, and get a perspective on current events that is informed by the past. They can end up in all sorts of jobs, and can apply to any job that requires a BA.</p>
<p>That said, there are many jobs that are related to history directly, besides teaching. I just spent a year working for two historic preservation organizations, in which people do fundraising and development (transferable to other jobs and contexts), research, archival work, preservation and restoration, community relations, museum management, and many other functions. There also were education components, mainly with either tourists or school-children.</p>
<p>There is a new field called “public history” that you might like to look up. But, again, your son may just enjoy studying history and end up doing something else entirely.</p>
<p>I originally wanted a history major to be able to work with historical records and such. However, thinking on it more, i decided to add anthropology as a double major to balance it out (they coplement each other).</p>
<p>History is a great thing to study. Significant jobs in “civil service” (non-health-related) usually require something like an MPA. For NGO work, history plus area studies (in a place she’d like to go), plus language(s) makes things much easier.</p>