Job losses at Albury-Wodonga campus likely in restructure of Charles Sturt University after $80 million revenue loss

An $80 million decline in revenue over 12 months has prompted a review of courses, campuses and the workforce.

"Universities have been under significant financial pressure and the pandemic is the final straw," Vice-Chancellor Andrew Vann said.

"What we're trying to create is a model where we can respond to student demand and if we have enough people who want to study face-to-face ... then we can deliver it face-to-face.

"But if they actually want to choose a blended mode, or there aren't enough people, you can still provide the course.

"We're absolutely confident of our ability to deliver quality education in the online space - three-quarters of our domestic students already study online - and we have the highest graduate employment rate in the country."

There is no target number for cutting jobs, and Professor Vann said the university was working through proposals for each campus.

"We haven't yet firmed up the proposals [for jobs], there's quite a bit of work to be done over the next month or so," he said.

"We will put that to staff, they will consult on it and we will make decisions once we have feedback.

"The courses and campuses will take us a bit longer to work through."

A participant in an online meeting about the changes told The Border Mail the university has had a long-term aim to reduce courses and staffing in favour of specialist campuses, and was using the pandemic as an opportunity to move on those plans.

Professor Vann said that was not right.

"We have been looking at our campuses' futures for a number of years ... the big hit that we've taken from the pandemic is really forcing us to move much more quickly on these things," he said.

"It is true the higher education sector has been under financial pressure for many years.

"We put messages out to staff this year that we would need to react to the loss from things like bushfires, however, the pandemic is a much, much bigger hit than that.

"It's extremely difficult times for everybody and the last thing you ever want to do is to have to lay off staff.

"It's difficult, we absolutely understand how unsettling and upsetting this is for our staff, and we're tying to work through this process as quickly and respectfully as we can."

A second round of workforce changes will be proposed by early next year, with a view to return to a balanced budget by the end of 2021.

The university executive will take a 10 per cent pay cut for an initial period of six months to support savings targets.

Changes to campuses being considered include more commercial arrangements with tenants, like the one with Gardens Medical Group.

Professor Vann said "everything is on the table".

"The asset cost for us is a significant issue, we have a lot of campuses and a lot of buildings, and there are various ways you can think about that," he said.

"You can bring people onto campus, you could potentially move some operations somewhere else.

"There's no decisions at this stage, but we're looking at the full range of opportunities."

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Professor Vann said there had been recent growth in some courses such as health and teacher education, with a re-imagined university intended to respond to demand.

"If we have a recession, usually a lot more people come back into higher education - there may actually be opportunities for things to increase in some areas in the future," he said.

"But also, we are going to have to cut costs.

"We're going to have to do this balancing act of making sure we offer courses that are the best fit for community needs and that's going to take us a little while to work through.

"We want to create a footprint across regional NSW that allows us to deliver academic excellence."

The transformation program has been called Sustainable Futures and will "build on the strengths of the university and ensure its future is financially and academically sustainable".