They didn't just trade free speech for cash. They traded their academic integrity.
Talk to anyone who teaches at ANU/Monash/Melbourne and they'll tell you the same thing: most international Chinese students should fail by every metric there is, but there is tremendous pressure from the faculty to 'find marks' to get those students to scrape through and look the other way at their plagiarism and cheating.
It's like there are two sets of standards now. One for Chinese students, and one for everyone else.
Talk to anyone who teaches at ANU/Monash/Melbourne and they'll tell you the same thing: most international Chinese students should fail by every metric there is, but there is tremendous pressure from the faculty to 'find marks' to get those students to scrape through and look the other way at their plagiarism and cheating.
It's like there are two sets of standards now. One for Chinese students, and one for everyone else.