Bachelor of Arts in History

There are great practical reasons to make history the centerpiece of your Mississippi State University education. Our history majors learn skills that are valuable in almost any career: to study history means learning how to conduct research, how to collect and make sense of large amounts of information, how to think analytically and form persuasive arguments, and how to write clearly.Even more importantly, history is the language in which you must be literate in order to understand any human culture, including your own. The past is the laboratory in which we analyze the human condition, the only “experiment” we have to refer to. We live in a world constructed out of the decisions of previous generations; recognizing how those choices were made in the past is an essential first step to making informed choices in the present.Last but not least you should study history because you want to. If you value the stories that make up the human experience, and if you want to learn how to take part in telling those stories, then the history major is the right one for you.History majors at Mississippi State enjoy a broad range of career opportunities. Many of our majors pursue careers in teaching, public history, or historic preservation. These students go on to history or education graduate programs, or pursue degrees in library science and archival studies, anthropology, or related fields.But these are just a fraction of the ways that our majors might choose to apply the critical thinking and writing skills they learn in history courses at Mississippi State. Our majors also attend law school, pursue careers in public policy, and work in the public health field. Other recent graduates have entered the U.S. Marshal Service, managed small businesses, entered the ministry, or attended medical school. A history major doesn’t limit the paths that you can follow after you graduate; it adds to your chosen career the wealth of human perspective, research and analytical skills, and writing craft that the study of history imparts.