Ninety-five employees have now left the university through a 'voluntary separation program', which wrapped up at the end of last month, but staff have been told the institution's workforce "imbalance" remains "significant".

While the National Tertiary Education Union queried the impact on workload for those left behind, the university has stressed the program was not about redundancies, but rather improving efficiency and research output by reducing the ratio of professional staff to academics.

The unusual scheme did not attract the same beneficial tax treatment as redundancy packages but gave staff the chance to be hired back in the future.

A university spokesman told Fairfax Media that, overall, the program had been a success and described the packages as generous, offering staff three weeks pay for every full year of service, capped at 60 weeks.

Costing almost $138,000 to run, the program had received more than 200 expressions of interest and handed out about $7.4 million in separation packages since it was announced in February. The university broke even on the program's costs in 2018, the spokesman said, and about $12.8 million in savings was expected to kick in from next year.

That money would go into recruiting more academics as well as a curriculum review, he said.

But according to the university's June figures, its staffing imbalance has failed to improve since 2015, with 29 academics among those taking a package to leave.

Staff who spoke to Fairfax Media said "a lot of talent" had since walked out the door and workloads were piling up. One faculty lost almost a dozen academics in one hit, and another area saw 14 professional staff take pay outs, according to university records.

Fairfax understands a number of employees also resigned without taking a package or did not have their contracts renewed during the same period.

"We've never had morale this low before," one staff member said. "They've waited until after the [packages] to do any actual workforce planning. It's a joke."

ACT division secretary of the union Rachel Bahl said she had warned the university back in February about a number of the problems she was now hearing from staff, including concerns related to workloads and people taking on higher duties without pay rises.

"This whole process has been undertaken with little thought as to what would come afterward," Ms Bahl said.

The university is currently advertising about 30 professional positions and will start recruitment for up to 40 academic roles at the end of the month.

But final decisions on which positions will be replaced are still being hashed out, the university confirmed, as work continues on its workforce planning strategy.

On Monday, former Universities Australia chief executive Belinda Robinson joined the university in the newly-created role of vice-president, university relations and strategy, which will see her leading teams in UC's new "professional areas of priority" including student recruitment and marketing.

Ms Bahl said the institution pushed back enterprise bargaining with the union on a new staff agreement last month, because it was "still finalising workforce initiatives".

In January, vice-chancellor Deep Saini revealed the federal government freeze on student places announced just two days before Christmas would leave the university with $1.8 million less than it had already factored into its 2018 budget. By 2019, that shortfall was likely to double, he said.

The university also reported 106 less students in 2018 than the year before, according to QS world rankings, and almost 5,000 less than it had hoped for under its 2013-17 strategic plan. Staff were told in May this had cost the university approximately $120 million in revenue.

Over the four-year life of the funding freeze, government modelling released under freedom of information laws reveals the University of Canberra will face an $18 million cut in its base funding.

At the Australian National University, that funding reduction is forecast at $25 million.

Vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt told Fairfax that, while the impact of the freeze was being felt keenly by the university, he was not yet considering the prospect of staffing cuts as the ANU looked to ramp up its philanthropic funding.

Do you know more? Get in touch: sherryn.groch@fairfaxmedia.com.au