Portfolio Architect — Prioritize Three Launches at Meridian Graduate School

A four-round, advanced higher-education portfolio-management simulation set inside Meridian Graduate School of Business, the self-funded graduate division of a large public research university in Miami (≈2,400 students, 64 full-time faculty, ≈$78M gross tuition on a responsibility-centered budget). The Provost has approved new Fall-2026 launches but with no new money and no new faculty lines. The Dean drops three fully-developed proposals on your desk — MS Business Analytics (STEM; 60 seats, $52,000 tuition, 22 senior-faculty sections), MS Health Administration (online/hybrid; 90 seats, $38,000, 30 adjunct-eligible sections) and a boutique Master in Sustainable Finance (30 seats, $46,000, 26 senior sections) — and asks for a prioritized portfolio decision in a 90-day budget window. The binding constraint is not demand or classrooms but faculty teaching capacity: only 45 free course sections, against 78 demanded, plus a fixed $1,200,000 enrollment-marketing budget. Playing the Executive Director, you (1) diagnose each program on contribution-margin-per-section, not sticker price, against the section-cost table ($95k full-time / $32k adjunct) and the enrollment funnel (~55% application-to-admit × ~38% admit-to-enroll); (2) prioritize under the 45-section ceiling — launch two strong, phase one, or split adjunct vs full-time — without raiding flagship programs (phantom capacity carries a hidden NPS/ranking bill); (3) allocate the $1.2M acquisition budget to where each dollar buys the most enrolled students and set tuition under price–yield elasticity (raising price lifts per-student contribution but shrinks yield); and (4) defend the portfolio to the Dean and a skeptical Trustee with an honest downside contingency (the Program A international-visa-freeze scenario). The math rewards contribution-margin-per-section prioritization, yield-driven budget allocation, disciplined pricing and a clean cut — and punishes the five classic errors: choosing by sticker price, phantom capacity over 45 sections, equal-split marketing, holding yield constant while raising price, and launching all three sub-scale to avoid choosing. Final KPIs track Portfolio Margin, Capacity Discipline, Enrollment Yield and Board Readiness.