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'What's the use of that? What sort of job will it get you? Couldn't you do something more useful?' How often has someone said, or implied, something to that effect when you told them you intend to study history at university?

What follows will give you the ammunition to answer them. For, not only do history graduates enter an extremely wide range of careers, many rise to the very top.

Within a few months of leaving university, all but 6% of history graduates have some form of employment, broadly in line with the average across all degree subjects. These are often temporary jobs that do not require a degree qualification. The main areas of employment six months after graduation are, in descending order:

• Clerical and secretarial Commercial,
• Retail assistants,
• Business and finance,
• Marketing/sales PR and advertising,
• Clerks and cashiers,
• Nursing,
• IT,
• Armed forces/public profession services,
• Industrial public sector,
• Catering, waiting and bar staff,
• Other professional and technical,
• Creative/design/ports professionals,
• Health and childcare,
• Teaching,
• Engineering.

However, a history degree is a sound basis for further career development and 30% of its graduates pursue a postgraduate qualification (well ahead of the average of 19% across all subjects) in vocational subjects such as law, accountancy, journalism, librarianship, teaching and IT.

By three years after graduation most history graduates are in more settled employment, in jobs that require their degree and in which they are using skills acquired in the course of their studies. Those who took a postgraduate qualification will be joining the professions for which they have trained. Only 2% will still be unemployed. Hence, although a history degree is not job specific, its graduates have the skills that enable them to pursue a multiplicity of careers demanding a wide range of talents, and they do so extremely successfully in an open and competitive jobs market. This success can be illustrated with examples of those who have achieved fame in their chosen careers.

Key positions in the media have been colonised by historians. They have a penchant for sports journalism - practitioners include the BBC TV correspondents, Jonathan Legard, Martin Tyler and John Inverdale and the Radio 5 Live presenters Alan Green and Simon Mayo, previously a Radio 1 DJ. In addition, there are several history graduates in the entertainment media, such as Louis Theroux and Jonathan Ross, and the children's TV presenters Simon Thomas and Timmy Mallett. There are also many academic historians who front or appear in programmes that popularise history, such as The History Hunters and Time Team. Among the best known are Michael Wood, David Starkey and Simon Schama. Keeping a watchful eye on much of this activity is Suzanne Warner, Deputy Chair of the Broadcasting Standards Commission.

"Although a history degree is not job specific, its graduates have the skills that enable them to pursue a multiplicity of careers demanding a wide range of talents, and they do so extremely successfully in an open and competitive jobs market."

Many historians have attained distinction in politics and at least four historians have become bishops (Blackburn, Guildford, London and Norwich). There are also a significant number of lawyers whose first degree is in history, including several barristers.

Some occupations have a more organic connection to a history education. Many history graduates become teachers, and some go on to become headteachers. The number of historians who have become university vice-chancellors is considerably larger than would be produced by a proportionate distribution across all disciplines. While it would be absurd to claim that the managerial skills required for these positions were inculcated through first-degree education, nevertheless the capacity of historians to attain such high positions in statistically significant ways says something about their all-round abilities.