I wonder if there has been any changes in thought in this area. I opened a tracker item in 2012 and it wasn't considered a bug.
https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-34523
Maybe it can be a feature request if enough people want this functionality? Even though I still think it's buggy as it's deceiving.
I am still faced with problems in this area. Simple approach is to remove the capability for faculty to restore content but that has negative consequences such as putting more load on me because I then have to do this for them.
I don't think 'restoring content' should have the same capabilities as 'create course' I think it should be the same as 'import content' which does not allow the faculty to modify course settings. If anything, allowing admins to choose the capabilities would help.
