Hundreds of staff at the University of New South Wales are facing the sack under a proposal from management to save $51 million a year by cutting back on its student and corporate support services, finance, IT, media and marketing operations.
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A leaked "operational excellence" proposal obtained by Fairfax Media shows $29.9 million has been budgeted for redundancies through severance pay across the departments.
The National Tertiary Education Union estimates that up to 415 full-time jobs could go under the two-year plan.
"The actual number of professional staff who could be affected is much higher, when taking into account that many professional staff members work on a fractional basis," the union said in a statement.
A university spokeswoman accused the union of "selectively quoting from a document", but acknowledged "some positions will no longer be needed".
"It outlines only one option modelled under our operational excellence review," she said. "In isolation, it presents a misleading picture."
Under the proposal, the biggest blows look set to land on the IT and student support service departments where 170 IT staff could go, while student support services could lose up to 70 staff, according to the union.
A further 58 finance staff would also be mode redundant, while more could go across its legal, research support and administration branches.
The move to "strengthen UNSW's capabilities whilst improving internal efficiencies", comes after consultations with 1400 stakeholders.
The spokeswoman said the university is currently developing detailed proposals for consultation with staff from February 2017.
The report warned not acting on the recommendations would put UNSW's ambitious $3 billion 2025 strategy at risk.
UNSW plans to position itself as one of the best 50 institutions in the world by focusing on discovery and innovation investments.
"Some positions will no longer be needed, some will evolve to meet new challenges and many roles and jobs will be created, providing new opportunities for our staff," the spokeswoman said.
"Implementing a strategy on this scale and delivering the benefits will of course involve substantial change and we have always made that clear.
The plan to slash hundreds of existing jobs comes after a successful 12 months for the Kensington institution and Vice Chancellor Ian Jacobs who is about to wrap up his second year in the job.
In January, UNSW overtook the University of Sydney as the number-one university preference for NSW school leavers.
HSC students are set to receive their final marks and make a decision on their university future from December 15.
