Keep budget arithmetic separate from survival claims
Does an 86.5 score establish that a program can withstand a cut?
No. The remaining budget is percentage arithmetic; the resilience score is a chosen weighted rule. Advocacy, enrollment and community sliders have no measured scale or calibration against actual program outcomes.
No named institution, financial statement, course schedule, student cohort or policy text is loaded. Courses contribute through both a capped weighted term and an uncapped additive bonus before the total score is clipped. The graph is a conceptual relationship diagram, not evidence of institutional causation.
Try a worked example
The baseline $4.20M budget with a 25% cut leaves $4.20M × 0.75 = $3.15M. Weighted score inputs total 88.2; the cut penalty is 11.25 and the course bonus is 9.55, giving 86.5. Increasing initial budget alone to $10M leaves $7.50M but keeps the same score, since dollars never enter the score equation.
Use real curriculum as context
UC Berkeley describes its African American Studies major as interdisciplinary across history, culture and social and political institutions. This is a concrete curriculum example, not evidence that a particular count of cross-listed courses prevents budget cuts or closure. Examine a program’s actual requirements and offerings separately from the toy course slider. UC Berkeley: African American Studies undergraduate program
Define indicators before assigning scores
IPEDS collects institutional information including enrollment, completions, staffing and finances. Those documented data categories can support research questions, but they do not supply this tool’s 88.5 enrollment index or advocacy scores. Institution-level enrollment is also not automatically a particular department’s enrollment or retention measure; define the population, period and denominator first. NCES: About IPEDS
Read presets and thresholds carefully
Severe Cuts changes only cut, advocacy and enrollment; High Advocacy changes cut, advocacy, community and courses. Other settings carry over. Reset before comparing presets to keep the baseline consistent. A cut of at least 40% or a score below 60 selects Critical; further cut/score bands select the other authored labels. They are not probability estimates or verified legal conditions.
Preserve assumptions in the export
Change one input at a time and compare remaining dollars with the score. JSON records the chosen inputs, formula scope and discussion prompt. Moving graph nodes changes positions only; it cannot improve a score or budget. Use the output as an explicit scenario record, then review actual institutional evidence before drawing conclusions.
Sources and further reading