The National Tertiary Education Union is calling on the university to reconsider the sponsorship deal and reverse the decision to dump its language programs.

Six academics were made redundant as part of the cuts, announced last month in response to federal government funding cuts.

The union’s ACT division secretary Stephen Darwin said the sponsorship deal, the cost of which has not been disclosed by the University of Canberra, should be reconsidered given the changing financial climate for tertiary education.

“We’re very keen that the university start considering its high cost sponsorship of the Brumbies,” he said.

“We think these are very high cost decisions … The union has asked repeatedly about the benefits of this sponsorship for students.”

The union is also urging the university to respond to a Freedom of Information request submitted on June 18, asking for further details on the financial data used to justify the closure of languages.

Mr Darwin said the union was yet to receive an acknowledgement of receipt from the university, required within a fortnight of lodging a request.

A spokesman for the university confirmed that a request had been received.

“There was a delay in acknowledging receipt of the request for which we apologise,” he said.

“The request is being processed at the moment as a priority and will be completed in accordance with our obligations under the Freedom of Information Act.”

Language students from the university protested last week in response to the cuts, which will see affected students travel to the Australian National University from August to complete their studies.

An estimated 300 language students are enrolled across Japanese, Mandarin and Spanish at UC, and only third-year language students and a small number of students in a specialist fourth-year Mandarin unit will be able to finish courses at UC at the end of this year.

The university spokesman said about 200 of the 300 students would be affected by the change.

He said the university was not in a position to "discuss the commercial aspects of our partnership with the Brumbies".