What Does Someone With A History Degree Do?

... arrgh...

we should really turn one "what to do w/ an history major" into a sticky thread so we would not have to repeat ourselves all the time.

Anyway... I don't see why Ishi's questions should not be answered:

History is a wonderful but rather demanding subject. Unlike say economics your own readings matter as much as those you do for class, so first point: passion matters!

Second, history as such leads nowhere not even to history. You have to get a tiny bit specialized (mind you you can change speciality as much as you wish). For instance military history would be a good start if you want to become a consultant in that field, political history would be good for a journalist, economic history -my home turff- really helps if you want to work for financial, international or national institutions as an analyst.

The secret of specilization is to choose a relevent minor. Some may tell you that a minor goes well with history (say English, Litterature or Sociology) mind you though. These are very much redondant with history and use the same set of skills. What you are looking for is to acquire new skills. In that respect non-obvious bedfellows of history may be more interesting: economics, psychology, human biology and genetics, geography, geology, etc. This would allow you to do thing your fellow historians can't even dream of.

In the same line of reasoning: languages are very very very very important. Think strategically as well. It would always be time to learn Latin or Ancient Greek once you've decided that Antiquity or the Middle Ages were the period of history you wanted to devot your carrier to. The language you pick has to be easily redeployed on the workplace. So choose a dificult but widely used language such as Japanese, Arabic, Hindi, etc (any non-European language with more than 100 million speakers). In addition, choose one European language, I guess Spanish would be a good pick. Language are certainly the best asset you'll have by the time you leave college, invest a lot in them.

So to answer your questions precisely:
1. What you can do with an history degree depends on your specialization. Less specialized people have civil-servant and edition jobs, or journalism or lobbying, more specialized ones can work for banks or consulting agencies.
2. Some of these jobs do pay very well (in excess of $100.000 per year with two or three years experience, much more if you are really good), but most of those don't (journalism and edition very likely pay less than a tenure in a university).
3. No you can't get a job travelling giving history lectures unless you manage to write a groundbreaking book, but mind you there are maybe less than 10 people doing that at the moment in the whole world and actually most of them also have a position in a university and are fairly old.

Good luck choose wisely young padawan

Most people who get history degree's teach to teenagers who don't give a crap about history.

Go into the securities business....at least you can make some real money.