Base funding, the money from provincial sources, doesn't begin to meet all the demands on it. And even if students are prepared to pay, hiring faculty for such programs isn't easy because few colleges have any office space to house new instructors. Despite growing enrollments, the number of full-time college and university teachers in Canada actually fell between 1992 and 1996, and for very good reasons. Cynically practical as this policy may be for now, it will soon become highly impractical. Universities already recognize that they stand or fall on the reputations of their professors and programs, and the same is often true of the colleges as well.
Good students compete to get into good programs, which in turn attract good new professors.
Good new professors then create exciting new programs which attract still more good students. Simon Fraser University, at least, is considering inducements literally unheard-of in the days when Ph.D.s were driving cabs and MA's were flipping burgers. In 1999, The President's Task Force on Faculty Renewal and Retention urged SFU to make faculty renewal its top priority. That means allocating every possible dollar to support faculty research and teaching. The task force also called for overhauling SFU's present salary system.