When it comes to popularity, a bachelor's degree in history sits in the middle of the road, ranking #19 out of 38 majors in the country. So, it might take a little more work to find colleges and universities that offer the degree program.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 14 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best History Bachelor's Degree Schools in Pennsylvania ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 1,046 bachelor's degrees in history to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great History School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The history bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality history program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of bachelor's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their bachelor's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on history students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other history students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How easy is it for history to pay back their student loans after receiving their bachelor's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized history related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for history students working on their bachelor's degree.
The history school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best History Bachelor's Degree Schools in Pennsylvania.
In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat.
Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.
It's hard to beat Villanova University if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in history. Located in the large suburb of Villanova, Villanova is a private not-for-profit university with a large student population.More information about a bachelor’s in history from Villanova University
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).