A university budget is a balance sheet, yes — but it is also a map of institutional priorities, a record of who bears risk and who is shielded from it, and an argument about what the university is for. In each scenario below you step into a real administrative role and inherit a real fiscal problem. Cuts here are made in people, not abstractions: every dollar you move in Academic Affairs is translated into a faculty line filled or left vacant.
Figures are stylized for play, not drawn from any single real institution. Tuition increases are capped at an assumed CPI of 3.0% — a stylized inflation ceiling, not a live economic indicator. Enrollment responds endogenously to faculty staffing levels, faculty compensation ("prestige" investment), and net price; research grant revenue responds to faculty and graduate-program capacity, weighted by discipline.