I’m a History major and ive been struggling with choosing a career path for quite long. History was a good option, mainly because I wanted to a History teacher/professor.
Problem is? I see no future in the field. In my freshtmen year I noticed some discrepancies that concerned me:
- My College Algebra professor was a History major. She didn't find a job after college, she went back, got a Master's in Mathematics, and now she's working in her masters in Engineering.
- My school just built another science building and another engineering building.
- I feel like the History (and liberal programs in general) are old. It seems that they don't even care about it. Engineering programs specifically seem more updated. Marketing for engineering is overwhelming. Again, the Liberal Arts page on the website seems outdated as well as the programs themselves.
- More science professors are being hired. History professor are old and I don't think they're gonna hire more.
- AT LEAST 40% OF HISTORY CLASSES ARE ONLINE.
- One of my History professors told us that the Dean won't hire full-time History professors anymore.
- One of my History professors told us that he told his son not to become a History prof. because in the future there won't be more History profs--- he believes the History major will still exist, but it's gonna be fully online.
- One Pol.Sci professors told me that if he was to go back to college, he wound't get into the Liberal Arts. He thinks it's an dead-end.
- Liberal Arts building is old and in really bad conditions. The Best buildings are health science, economics, science, and engineering.
- The few full-time employed liberal arts professors work a lot. They teach a lot of classes compared to science or engineering professors.
- my School district is not longer hiring tutors because they're struggling with funding.
- I'm from Texas. As of right now, legislators are trying to reduce funding. However, they just passed a bill to increase teachers salaries. I'm afraid this would affect funding or employment, specially for History teachers.
I am now a sophomore-next year I’ll be a junior. I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid and confused. I was thinking my major to computer science, mainly because that was my second option, but again, if I could, I would go for teaching since it fits my lifestyle–I love talking about History and doing research. The thing is that I’m interested in programming and computers in general, BUT I don’t want to work doing that. I like learning about tech, but just as a hobbie. I don’t think I’ll be a good developer.
I don’t know what to do. on one side I don’t want to start all over again, I don’t want to spend more time and money, and I do actually like my current major and the job I could get. PROBLEM IS, I know I won’t get a job–or that I willl have a hard time finding one, and it that happens, I would prefer working as a software developer than at walmart.
From a LAC that’s also building more science buildings too.
I thought I wanted to double major, with one a BA in History. The prospects don’t look fantastic if you only think of teaching history or if you don’t want to attain anything beyond a masters (you can’t teach at a University level then).
Don’t be afraid to switch your thinking. Economics is a subject that you may find better matches corporate interests, but it still is influenced by study of culture/society (and your electives may still count). Geography/geology is also related to cultural studies. Check out the field of geoinformatics and remote sensing; it integrates technology and computer science in a much more culturally-linked and aware sense. This is where I have interests now, and it is actually a lot of fun! Texas would provide many jobs for this field, as there are many roles in energy, urban planning, and defense that open up.
Think, too, if teaching necessarily means you need to have a classroom in the traditional sense. You can earn a history degree, and with the right M.A. or Ph.D, you have career options like a preservationist, archaeologist, or curator open to you. I would recommend looking into potential careers in directing museums. You have the opportunity to still talk about history, teach about it, and play a role in preserving it. Computer science skills are really great regardless of major, as are any grant-writing or business administration skills. If you can, get a minor in computer science. Integration of technology and education is becoming more and more common, and someone has to program and deisgn interfaces for displays.
Minoring is a great way to show that you are competent in a very specific set of skills, like data science or computer science, but history could still show that you have a general social awareness, and a way to apply those specific skills with thoughtful consideration of the world we operate in today. Certificates are more like industry-level acknowledgements of your competency, but they function like minors. Look at these options too. The best thing you can do for yourself is add some marketable skills for future careers. Jobs are moving away from requiring specific degrees, and more just specific skill sets. Learn things like Revit, AutoCAD, ArcGIS, C, and you can instantly work on any site doing planning, archaeological management, or data management.
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If you love history, then study history. There are fewer direct routes into very specific careers, like computer science → software developer or civil engineering → engineer. You’ll have to be more creative with your career aspirations, and will need to do internships or take classes or trainings to get skills that employers want. But you can get a job with a history major.
The individual experiences of people who majored in history aren’t necessarily relevant, unless there’s some pattern you can point to across them. Everyone can easily call to mind a story of a humanities major who couldn’t find a job after college, but I know a statistics major who was unemployed for seven months after college; I know some computer science majors and financial engineering majors who struggled to find employment for some time; I know a finance major who hated it and went back to school to go into teaching. There are stories like that in most fields.
What you really need to look at is the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate in history is a little higher than that of some science and engineering fields, but it is not a statistically significant difference in most cases (which means that the difference could be due to random chance). What’s most different between these fields are salaries.
Science and engineering fields are lucrative fields with higher salary potential. The routes into these careers also require little imagination or creativity - that’s not a dig; what I mean is that it doesn’t take much thought for a computer scientist to think about going into software development or an engineer to go into engineering, whereas the vast majority of history majors don’t become historians or history teachers. So it’s an appealing major to many college students. Also, tech and engineering companies 1) make lots of money and 2) really need workers to come help them continue to make lots of money. So they donate tons of money to universities to build shiny new centers to help them produce human resources in return.
The truth, however, is that only half of all science and engineering majors end up in science jobs after graduation. (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2014/cb14-130.html). And in most science fields (the ones other than computer science and engineering), really it’s much more than half. If you don’t think that you would be a very good developer, why would you major in computer science with that aim? You do need to be at least moderately good to get hired. If you like tech, there are lot of ways to work in tech without being a software developer. We need people with lots of skill sets.
And very few college graduates, including ones in the humanities, end up working in retail or food service. It’s a common trope, but it’s actually pretty unlikely. (https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr749.pdf?la=en).
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