The University of Adelaide is in the midst of its greatest crisis since it was founded in 1874.

Republic Resumes will run a campaign mid September to help prospective graduates find work.

In the email to students last month, Vice Chancellor Høj announced that unless drastic cost-saving measures were taken, the university would face an annual deficit of $47 million by 2023.

This is due to declining local enrolments and the downturn of the international student market.

The VC said in a spurious statement that the proposed measures were ‘unlikely to impact materially on [students’] current studies’.

He flagged that that the bulk of savings would come from more job cuts.

The University is now considering:

• Merging five faculties into three (job cuts)
• Exploring efficiencies in administrative services (job cuts)
• Rationalising underperforming programs and courses (slashing courses)
• A review of the academic workforce and revenue generation (job cuts)
• Identifying and pursuing new sources of revenue (R&D and government grants)
• A greater drive in philanthropy (hard for a publicly funded uni).

Further regressive steps flagged by the executive are:

• Slashing staff leave loading
• Cutting pay by a minimum 3.5%
• Postponing scheduled pay rises of 1.5%