Dean's Bet — Allocate the EUR 14M Envelope at Massif Business School

A four-round, advanced higher-education strategy simulation. You are the Dean of Massif Business School (MBS), a triple-accredited grande école in Grenoble, France (EUR 92M budget, ~4,800 students, 165 faculty), the week of 30 September 2026. The European Master-in-Management ranking has just dropped MBS from 32nd to 41st — its sharpest fall in a decade, driven by weak career-progression and international-mobility scores — and in the same week the board approves a one-off EUR 14M strategic envelope over three years against ~EUR 31M of credible asks (exec-ed EUR 8M, degrees EUR 11M, faculty EUR 9M, brand EUR 3M). You must respond to the ranking AND sharpen positioning, without breaching a 2.0% operating-surplus covenant on the development loan. Round 1 diagnoses which ranking drivers are money-fixable versus structural and quantifies the portfolio gap. Round 2 sets the differentiation positioning — deepen the responsible-innovation niche, pivot to an adjacent differentiator, or broaden toward a generalist top-40 school — and names what MBS will NOT compete on. Round 3 allocates the EUR 14M across exec-ed, degrees, faculty and brand, phases the spend across three years to protect the surplus floor, and decides the fate of two star professors being courted by rivals. Round 4 defends the plan to a sceptical board chair and trustee, committing to four KPIs. The math rewards concentrating a real bet aligned with positioning and punishes the five classic errors — peanut-buttering the envelope, joining an un-winnable arms race against better-funded rivals, declaring a positioning the money contradicts, front-loading spend through the 2.0% covenant, and hollowing the faculty that underpins reputation and accreditation. Final KPIs: brand-differentiation score, reputation/ranking index, operating surplus %, and portfolio balance.