David M. Perry is a journalist and historian. He's the senior academic adviser to the history department at the University of Minnesota. Follow him on Twitter. The views expressed here are those of the author. View more opinion articles on CNN.

(CNN) Congratulations to Emma Boettcher, a librarian at the University of Chicago, who unseated 31-game winner James Holzhauer, a professional gambler, and won (so far!) $46,801 on the game show 'Jeopardy!'

David M. Perry

Her win is a victory for the humanities, at least for one night. But it shouldn't take winning a game show to pay off the cost of one's education.

Boettcher won convincingly, hitting a Daily Double early in the second round. She had taken control of the board by knowing that the North American city of Beverwyck had changed its name to Albany in 1664. She stayed in the category "Capital 'A'," got the chance to double up, and bet her full sum of $7,600. She knew that Annapolis was the home to the annual United States sailboat show, took the lead, and never really looked back. Boettcher finished the round a few thousands dollars ahead and found herself looking at a Final Jeopardy question on "Shakespeare's Times." As an English major at Princeton, Boettcher had written an undergraduate thesis on Shakespeare, so confidently bet $20,000, putting her 1$ over the maximum her opponent could have won assuming they both got it right. She correctly identified that the line from As You Like It, "A great reckoning in a small room," likely referred to the mysterious murder of Christopher "Kit" Marlowe . The game show crowned a new champion.

To win against Holzhauer, Boettcher relied on a well-rounded liberal arts and sciences education. She needed knowledge from literature, foundational sciences, history, and more in order to answer her questions, all while quickly deploying her math skills to make the right wager. The math around student loans, especially when it comes to allowing people to study what they want, isn't so easy.