The Ministry of Education in Canada's province of Quebec is threatening to significantly reduce McGill University (McGill)'s operating grant in response to a proposed Master's of Business Administration (MBA) tuition fee increase. From September 2010, the university's Desautels Faculty of Management is aiming to substantially raise the current cost of its MBA programme in alignment with the fees charged by other Canadian business schools of a similar size and nature. Doing so will seemingly eliminate the programme's dependency on provincial government subsidies which, the university claims, by failing to cover the basic operational cost of the MBA, compromise McGill's reputation as much as its ability to provide a high-quality programme. Although the university's expressed interest in adopting a self-funded programme model is long-standing--with some students even supportive of the proposed fee increase--Quebec's Ministry of Education argues that such a model disrespects its own mandate to make fair use of public higher education monies. Yet leaders from Quebec's business sector suggest that the government's fair use is encouraging mediocrity by forcing institutions to choose between excellence and access. Why is McGill's Desautels Faculty of Management proposing a tuition fee increase, and how are various stakeholders responding to it? How might the dispute affect the programme's enrolment, and what implications does it bear for higher education funding elsewhere?