Students from Hong Kong are surprised and disappointed their posters, appealing for solidarity with protesters in Hong Kong, have been ripped down by Massey University.

OPINION: The recent reporting about Massey University removing posters on campus put up by Hong Kong students has been a topical issue among staff and students, and it has put Massey in the national spotlight again concerning issues of free speech.

Only a week earlier, Massey cancelled the controversial Feminism 2020 event due to "health, safety and wellbeing obligations".

In 2018, Massey faced criticism for canning an event that included the former leader of the National and ACT parties, Don Brash, as a speaker.

On each occasion, Massey would have weighed up the pros and cons before reaching a decision in what are often "no win" situations. In the latest event – pulling down posters – Massey obviously would have preferred that the posters didn't go up. However, the posters did go up and Massey, rightly or wrongly, made a decision to pull them down.

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* Don Brash free speech debate in Auckland booms on back of Massey's ban

WARWICK SMITH/STUFF Massey University students from Hong Kong are surprised and disappointed their posters, appealing for solidarity with protesters in Hong Kong, were taken down by the university.

On one hand, Massey has to deal with the complexities of "free speech", which in itself is completely subjective – even the Free Speech Coalition lists eight "categories of speech that are not included in free speech".

On the other hand, there are economic considerations that must be taken into account. All organisations need to remain financially viable to exist. Therein lies the problem.

Massey's 2018 Annual Report shows its revenue included $108.6 million in student fees from domestic students. In comparison, it received $84.1m in student fees from international students. The same report shows Massey had 5331 international students and that 3722 students were born in China. Of course, not all Chinese-born students are international students, but it is probably fair to say most are.

In other words, Massey, probably like many if not all of our universities, is beholden to its international full-fee paying students from China. In turn, so is the rest of the country. Why? International education is New Zealand's fourth largest export earner.

According to Education Minister Chris Hipkins, "$4.8 billion is attributed to international students visiting New Zealand and $0.3b to education and training goods and services delivered offshore". Further, about 50,000 jobs in New Zealand are connected to international students.

MURRAY WILSON/STUFF Steve Elers is a senior lecturer at Massey University.

China can literally turn the tap off overnight. It threatened to do that to the United States a few months ago due to the trade war between China and the US, which has resulted in a "record number of Chinese students" at British universities. The Global Times, the Chinese state newspaper owned by the Chinese Communist Party's mouthpiece the People's Daily, wrote earlier this year: "American universities shouldn't be so arrogant. By leaving China's booming market and leaving Chinese students, those universities would feel regrettable."

Enough said.

So, the question becomes: Are we prepared to risk our fourth largest export earner, $5b and 50,000 jobs, for the sake of "free speech" in the form of posters?

If you follow the deontological position of ethics, you might subscribe to the view that removing posters is morally wrong, and therefore you are willing to jeopardise $5b and up to 50,000 jobs because upholding "free speech" is paramount.

In contrast, if you adhere to the teleological position, you would make a decision based on the best overall consequences – that might mean you are not willing to jeopardise $5b and up to 50,000 jobs, so you pull down the posters. What I have outlined is a simplified approach – I am not a philosopher – but either way it is definitely a "no win" situation for Massey.

Yes, Massey and perhaps all of our universities have become far too reliant on China. This should never have happened, but successive governments have continued to apply a "do more with less" approach through tightened funding.

According to the Tertiary Education Union, in 2018 the sector was "given 10 per cent less than it had in 2009, the year after National took power". Chronic underfunding of the sector has led to the situation we are now facing.

If we remove Chinese money from the equation, who will make-up the shortfall? The Government won't.

A colleague mentioned we should rely on donations rather than Chinese money. That will never work in New Zealand because our country is too small. Massey's total operating revenue was over $0.5b, including fees, research grants, government grants, charges for services etc, just $3.8m was donated – a drop in the bucket.

It's a bit late, but we need to start a conversation and confront this issue head on.

Steve Elers is a senior lecturer at Massey University, who writes a weekly column for Stuff on social and cultural issues.