Students protest cuts to Sydney University's arts and social science faculty

More than 20 government and international relations courses are among those on the chopping block at the University of Sydney, as it prepares to cut courses and casual staff in the faculty worst-hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

About 8 per cent of courses across the university's arts and social sciences faculty will be cut according to early estimates, which is less than up to 30 per cent initially stipulated.

But that figure is an average across the six faculty schools. Staff estimate cuts to the school of social and political sciences could be closer to 30 per cent, while in the languages school it could be 4 or 5 per cent.

About 100 students and staff representatives protested against the cuts on Friday, pasting an open letter to Vice-Chancellor Michael Spence to the walls of the university's administration building.

"The sudden and dramatic drop in the university's course offerings, coupled with the devastating loss of talented and committed staff members, will lead to a long-term decline in the quality of education offered by the university," the letter said.

National Tertiary Education Union branch president Kurt Iveson said the cuts involved "awesome electives and small tutorials" taught by staff on casual contracts who would lose their jobs.

He said courses on offer to students were two-thirds of what they were 10 years ago. "They've already been slashed to the bone," he said.

The university projects the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences will lose 21 per cent of its student load and 26 per cent of revenue, making it the faculty most-impacted by the pandemic.

"Having been projected to post a surplus of $29m for 2020, we are now on track to make a deficit of $68m," Vice-Chancellor Michael Spence and faculty dean Annamarie Jagose wrote to staff last week.

They said the university would not know until after June 1 precisely how many units will be paused.

But staff and students say they have already identified about 50 courses that will no longer be taught by the university. Twenty-seven of these are government and international relations courses. Four are sociology units, and three subjects from each of anthropology, English and political economy will be suspended.

It comes days after the University of Wollongong announced it would absorb its Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts into other areas, leading to dozens of job losses.