Making money with history

LivyHistory is not usually a favourite among secondary school students, memorising all those dates and names and sequential events can be quite burdensome. But the same cannot be said about it as an undergraduate course.  College history is not designed around state-mandated textbooks or standardized tests. Yes, like in any field, you have to remember […]

Livy
History is not usually a favourite among secondary school students, memorising all those dates and names and sequential events can be quite burdensome. But the same cannot be said about it as an undergraduate course.  
College history is not designed around state-mandated textbooks or standardized tests. Yes, like in any field, you have to remember stuff. It’s college.  But the heart of historical study is a richly vicarious experience, teaching you to move beyond yourself and visualize other worlds, to explore the relationship between material circumstances and human character.  
Perhaps because there is a general lack of appreciation for history in Nigeria, studying it as a course in university is more often a last option.  Students who choose to study this course, do so not knowing what career opportunities to explore after graduation from school. In the event that history happens to you, that is it was not your first choice of study or you actually loved the subject but are now thinking you may have made a mistake, do not despair.  With strategic planning and creativity there are so many opportunities to explore armed with your knowledge of history.
The education you require to become a historian will depend on the type of historian you want to be. You will need at a minimum a four year bachelors degree with a major in history. This could allow you to teach history in a secondary school. It could also help you to get a job in a visitors center, library, or museum where you could go on to work on educational programs, or as a research assistant.
The best opportunities will go to those with a postgraduate qualification such as a masters or PhD. A masters degree in history will allow you work on research projects or head your own research. A PhD will allow you access to teaching positions within a university setting. While in graduate school, Ph.D candidates specialize in studying a particular person, period, or region. The specialty you choose can have a big impact on the career options available to you, so choose wisely.
Already there is acute shortage of academic staff in many universities and a substantial number of academics are due for retirement. So, retirements along with high student numbers means some universities will need to hire more academic staff, including historians.
While at college, it’s a good idea to gain some experience as a historian. Local libraries and museums offer numerous volunteer positions where you could start to gain some experience. You could also offer to help your professors with their own research, or take on a position a graduate teacher.
 There are many different paths you could take when you become a historian. If you were employed as a college professor, you would start out as a graduate teacher, then as an assistant instructor. You would climb the ranks of academia to become a professor once you gained tenure.
Working in a visitors center or museum, you could start out as an assistant. You could be giving out tickets, keeping accurate records, or simply handing visitor inquiries. After a while, you may give talks or presentations to visitors. You could go on to coordinate exhibitions, manage departments and facilities, or other administrative duties.
Many historians work as researchers. They could be assistant a college professor on a project, or working for a state or local government.
Some historians contract out their services to organisations like local authorities, government departments or not-for-profit organisations.  Areas in which historians could contract their services are reviewing documents and artifacts from the past, conducting research, preserving artifacts, researching and writing papers and writing books.
Again, within all of these it is important to think outside the box. In the search for successful historians, the name Bruce Weindruch surfaced. Weindruch, 55, graduated from Grinnell College Iowa in the United States with a B.A. in American Civilization and a minor in Education. He then went on to pursue a Ph.D from George Washington University and Smithsonian Affiliation Ph.D. program but never received it before deciding to start his own business, The History Factory.
The History Factory helps to tell the story of companies in a way that their employees, their community can relate to them. Weindruch said he basically monetized a lot of things he learnt in American studies and the museum business.
In March this year, he visited his old college again after graduating in 1978. In an interview with the college’s local newspaper Scarlet & Black, Weindruch who used to work for the National Portrait Gallery explained how he started a business of his own.
His words: “One thing that I had always been interested in from my Grinnell years was business biography or business history. While at graduate school and at the Smithsonian, any question that ever came up about business history or economic history, I had an answer to it. What happened was I started to become known as the guy who you could go to about business history. They started referring people to me. Companies would say, “We can’t help you, but there’s this guy.” And I started to consult. That’s why I transitioned to a business.
An article published by Washington Post on Weindruch says his company boasts of clients like  massive oil producers such as Saudi Aramco, Shell Oil and clothier Brooks Brothers.He leads a team of 35 historians, archivists, library scientists, writers, curators, designers and businesspeople at and he makes a nice living doing it.
“This is what you do when you commercialize a traditionally academic discipline,” Weindruch said.