“What’s a utility infielder?” a colleague asked in an AHA Slack channel after The Washington Post quoted me comparing history majors to this do-it-all role on “the workforce baseball team.” A utility infielder, I explained, is versatile enough to play multiple positions on the field, displaying a well-rounded set of skills that can be adapted to different situations. Admittedly, this isn’t the most glorious (or the highest paid) pathway to success for an aspiring star. But at the hypercompetitive level of professional sports, in which every player is a world-class athlete, such versatility is an exceedingly desirable quality that can make or break a career.
My comments came in response to a Microsoft study identifying the 40 occupations for which generative AI was most immediately applicable. The authors of this report filtered 200,000 anonymized user queries from Microsoft’s Copilot generative AI tool through the 21st-century equivalent of a high school career suitability survey. Historian ranked second on this list, prompting responses that ranged from panic or resignation to incredulity.
What did historians think about claims that AI might replace us? the journalist wanted to know. And what could we say to undergraduate students worried about future career prospects in our discipline? Conveniently, my colleagues Julia Brookins, Laura Ansley, and I were in the midst of preparing a revised second edition of the AHA’s best-selling booklet, Careers for History Majors, which features data, testimonials, reflective essays, and practical guidance for undergraduate students thinking about how to put a degree in history to good use after graduation.
College graduates with history degrees forge successful careers in a dizzying array of fields. In the world of athletics, to stretch my analogy yet further, history majors coach football (Mike McDaniel), baseball (Dave Roberts), soccer (Jesse Marsch), and basketball (Shaka Smart), to name just a few. Studying history provides a strong foundation for careers in business (Carly Fiorina), law (Sonia Sotomayor), museums (AHA president-elect Lonnie Bunch III), and academia. Even four occupants of the White House (FDR, Nixon, G. W. Bush, and Biden) were history majors. The new booklet includes essays and testimonials from professors, academic advisors, career counselors, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit executives, as well as an endocrinologist, a software engineer, a retired colonel, and the owner of an artisanal mustard company.
We approached this edition as an opportunity to center the needs of students and recent graduates entering a rapidly evolving workforce. In addition to updated and expanded career data, we developed a chart matching learning outcomes for history students with the skills employers use in hiring. Additional new content provides practical guidance for the job application process to supplement more reflective essays about what to look for in a graduate program, the civic value of historical study, and the many other (often less tangible) benefits of a life grounded in historical thinking.
Above all, we hoped to reassure current and prospective history majors that there is value in following your intellectual passions. Thinking about careers need not come at the expense of the aspects of history that attracted many of us to this field of study in the first place. Wherever they work, history majors often find ways of applying disciplinary knowledge, empathy, and habits of mind to guide their endeavors.
History is everywhere and helps define all of us. Many jobs require elements of historical thinking. And this, I would contend, can help explain why so many of the queries put to generative AI tools involve tasks associated with our work. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about the future of our discipline in the AI economy. But reports of history’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Baseball teams still rely on utility infielders, and the world needs history majors more than ever.
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