Most lucrative history fields?

[kaputt]

What do you predict will be the most valued expertise in professors in the next 5-10 years? 

[czesc]

Most lucrative? You mean in terms of salary?

 

You're in the wrong field.

Edited September 13, 2013 by czesc

[Riotbeard]

While I agree with lucrative-ness being the wrong aim, I think it's fair to answer.  Anything practical to modern geopolitics, i.e. Asia and Middle-east, business history, and history of med/science.  The truth is though these will have some of the best job markets, but the most lucrative would be a job where you get hired to be a historian in a business department or medical school.  These department pay much better than humanities departments.  I don't think (outside of endowed chairs), there is a significant pay difference based on field within departments. 

 

I will say, I think it's stupid that people disliked your post.  Oodles of money is not why I got into history, and I am not sure it is practical to go into history with expectations of making more than a middle class salery, but I don't get the need of people on this board to dislike your post, because you have different aims.

[Sigaba]

I will say, I think it's stupid that people disliked your post.  Oodles of money is not why I got into history, and I am not sure it is practical to go into history with expectations of making more than a middle class salery, but I don't get the need of people on this board to dislike your post, because you have different aims.

 

I agree. Without a fuller understanding of what the OP means or why the OP has posed the question, it is ill advised to form an opinion.  For all we know, the OP may be attempting to balance his/her love for history with pressure from his/her family.   (And there are a few threads in which members of this BB struggle with that very issue.)

 

And with a fuller understanding of what the OP means or why the OP has posed the question, it is still ill advised to form an opinion. If the motivation is about making the biggest paycheck possible, so what?

 

To answer the question, if you want to make a lot of money as a historian, the way to go is as a popular historian who writes narrative works on traditional fields such as war, "high" politics, and "X and his times" biographies.

 

While this approach may land you in good stead with a lay audience, journalists, and talk show hosts, you may take some hard knocks from academic historians who have different sensibilities on how Klio should be served.

[kdavid]

Perhaps another way to phrase this question would be:

 

Which sub-fields are getting the most fellowship and grant money right now?

[Riotbeard]

Perhaps another way to phrase this question would be:

 

Which sub-fields are getting the most fellowship and grant money right now?

 

Hard to answer to0 simply as there are far too many factors. There is a percieved need for chinise history and other east asian fields.  U.S. history is probably the worst with late 20th U.S. being the worst of the worst.  Fields with a perceived practical application, i.e. medicine, "big" science, business, and geo-politically imporant regions probably are your best bet, although, I will reiterate, this is a very difficult question to answer.  There are probably more grant opportunities for U.S. history than any other geographical field; however, the applicant to grant ratio is very poor. 

[czesc]

Definitely very tricky to answer, because the best funding opportunities for grad students/research aren't always the best in terms of employment. For example, doing German history will mean a lot of German government funds are available to you, but there are currently no German history jobs open on the market.

 

I'd only really ask the question if there were specific fields one was having a hard time choosing between and needed a deciding factor, though. History just isn't a discipline in which it makes sense to do work in a given area for the primary purpose of chasing grant money - there won't be that much of it in any of them.

 

The best way to reconcile an interest in history with a desire to make lots of money IMO is find a lucrative job with relatively limited hours (say in banking) that allows you to read a lot. Barring that, even being a freelance journalist who writes commercially targeted biographies of the Founding Fathers (even if only based on others' research!) could leave you much more financially successful than a professional historian.

Edited September 18, 2013 by czesc