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Department of History

Careers

“Is that true?” This question may be the most powerful of the 21st century. At UofSC, history majors leave college with the skills to answer it, giving them enormous power in the marketplace and in graduate school. They become experts on how to search for answers to long-term problems, analyzing and verifying sources and data. As a history major, you also learn to think innovatively and to evaluate consequences over time, to ask if history really does “repeat itself,” or what can be done to change an outcome

Workforce success

Our history department is a national leader in helping students adapt to the Digital Age and to the booming creative economy. It offers several transferable skills to its graduates, including:

  • Analyzing leadership decisions, styles, and consequences
  • Making decisions through systematic means and analysis
  • Developing alternative ideas and debating their merits
  • Managing both small and large long-term research projects
  • Time management
  • Making evidence-based arguments by conducting complex research, organizing massive amounts of information, and prioritizing it for an unfamiliar audience
  • Communicating in easily understandable ways using written, verbal, and multimedia techniques
  • Familiarity with diverse cultures and histories of peoples around the world
  • Understanding that globalism and localism are inseparable and their power comes from choices made by people
  • Confidence to answer questions that seem unanswerable

Career options by sector

A bachelor’s degree in history is a launching pad for a wide variety of careers and is outstanding preparation for graduate and professional schools:

  • Public history—museums, historic preservation, archives
  • Legal—lawyers, judges, paralegals, managers
  • Education—elementary, secondary, colleges and universities, consulting
  • Politics
  • Business and management
  • Public policy and public administration
  • Diplomacy and national security
  • Law enforcement and intelligence agencies
  • Media and journalism
  • Writing
  • Libraries and information sciences
  • Advertising
  • Non-profit management and humanitarianism