Best 2023 University/College History Programs Offering an Online Bachelor's Degree
Back in 2019, a reader of the Raleigh Civil War Round Table website sent this editor an email message wanting to know if I could add a link to the website of the University where she worked. Specifically, she wanted to promote her University's online bachelor's degree program in History.
She pointed out that people interested in the Civil War might be interested in History, especially American History, in general. Furthermore, online degrees offer maximum flexibility for working adults and retired seniors, the same demographic that makes up the vast majority of our Civil War Round Table membership. "Flexibility" denotes the fact that most online programs allow a student to start at any time and to work at their own pace.
It is also possible that these online History programs offer the possibility of demonstrating proficiency in a course by passing an online test and, thereby, not having to take the course. Credits from course work already taken at other institutions, in person or online, are also sometimes transferable.
But why study History in the first place? The following list includes dozens of career opportunities that one could pursue with an undergraduate History degree in hand:
In reality, however, some of these positions require the addition of a follow-up graduate degree in a related discipline.
Returning to the correspondent's request, rather than simply posting a link to her University, I decided to scour the web for top 25 lists of online Universities/Colleges where others have already done the legwork of gathering the data and generating the rankings based on stated criteria. Presented below is my collation of four such linked lists of rankings, updated for 2023 for a new cadre of incoming Freshman. Her school, Maryville University in St. Louis, MO, was included in the 2019 version, even though it didn't appear in any of the four lists. For this 2023 update, it is included based on its own merits.
Four sources went into the table I created for Best 2023 University/College History Programs Offering an Online Bachelor's Degree:
Note that I gave the list based only on price the same weight as each of the three lists based on academic quality. A full course load leading to an online bachelor's degree in History typically requires tuition, i.e., the price for instruction, in the form of 120 credit hours. Since North Carolina is not mentioned on any of the lists, I am limiting the following discussion of cost to out-of-state tuition. Out-of-state per-credit costs for an online bachelor’s degree in History ranges from $145 to $716 in 2023's list (as compared to $190 to $575 in 2019's list). Therefore, students should expect to pay between a best case of $17,400 and a worst case of $85,920 in total tuition for the equivalent of a four-year education. The average of those extremes would be $51,660. (For 2019, these figures were $22,800, $69,000, and $45,900. So, in the past four years, online tuition has increaed 12.5%, or about 3% per year). Note that in addition to tuition is the cost of books, supplies, and other expenses. For an in person education, this would add around an additional 13%. Since we are limiting this discussion to a 100% online education, it is possible that some, if not all, of the books required would also be available digitally online at a reduced cost. Since one would be pursuing the degree online from home, there would be no additional room and board expenses beyond what one is already experiencing. In comparison, here is a breakdown of the average tuition cost of four full years (120 credit hours) of attending college in person: So, the average 2023 online out-of-state cost of $51,660 ($45,900 in 2019) for a bachelor's degree in History is a bargain compared to the in-person out-of-state costs of $91,812 ($102,480 in 2019). The high cost of education is having an effect on the long-term survival of Universities/Colleges in the U.S. A CBS report in 2019 stated that 25% of all Universities/Colleges are expected to close over the next 20 years. This is disheartening because one advantage in-person attendance in a place of higher learning bestows is valuable socialization skills, skills not learned online. The original version of this Raleigh CWRT website article on best institutions offering online bachelor's degrees in history also appeared in the September 2019 Raleigh CWRT Knapsack newsletter. In response to it, Matt Farina, editor of the newsletter for the Rusfus Barringer CWRT in Southern Pines, informed me that Jim Lighthizer, in his American Battlefield Trust newsletter, stated that only 23 of the top 75 colleges and universities (US News and World Report) require at least one course in American history as a requirement for history majors. A sad state of affairs, indeed. In order to reflect the relative importance of appearing on as many of the four included ranking lists as possible, the sort order of institutions in the table below are adjusted by sorting those institutions to the top which appear on the most lists. No institution appears on all four lists. Within the grouping of institutions appearing on three of the four lists, the institutions are sorted by order of average ranking from low to high. The second tier of ranking occurs for those institutions appearing on two of the four lists, and so forth. Of all the listings in the table below, only Liberty University offers a specific online bachelor's degree in military studies, with a focus on history. Other than that, Southern New Hampshire University is the only one to offer an online bachelor's history degree with a focus on military history. The others offer an online bachelor's degree in history with the option for a focus on American history. Considering all factors, including being highly rated by three of the four rating sources, having a relatively moderate cost, and a relatively high graduation rate, the best institution for receiving an online out-of-state bachelor's degree is Oregon State University in Corvallis. The University of Central Florida in Orlando and the University of Illinois at Springfield rank second and third, respectively. All three of these universities retain their respective rankings from my 2019 survey. Best 2023 University/College History Programs Offering an Online Bachelor's Degree Table Key: US = USNews.com; BC = BestColleges.com; BS = TheBestSchools.org; BV = BestValueSchools.com; NR = Not Ranked; ? = Info not available. Cost per Credit Hr is for out-of-state students. Online Enrollment includes all undergraduate degree disciplines. The table scrolls horizontally to allow all data columns to be viewed. On a PC, the scroll bar comes into view when the mouse pointer is hovered over the line separating the bottom row of data and the repeated header, i.e., footer. On a smart phone, drag the table left or right with one's finger. Clicking on the name of a university/college will open that school's webpage on obtaining an undergraduate degree in history.