The changes are being made at the Universities seven campuses across New South Wales and the ACT and are designed to help claw back an almost $50-million deficit.

CSU refused to be interviewed and a spokeswoman told the ABC that the university did not believe it was "that big a change".

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) disagrees.

"That's an extraordinary statement to make," said the NTEU's Assistant Secretary, Damien Cahill.

"Charles Sturt University is going through probably the biggest and most radical change in a decade.

"It's going through a massive restructuring of its workforce where you're potentially going to see 200 people or more lose their jobs.

"That expertise and that knowledge is going to be stripped out of the university."

Among the bachelor degrees being cut are: Outdoor Education and Health and Rehabilitation Science at Albury/Wodonga, the Sustainable Agriculture post graduate course at Orange and Information Technology at the Wagga Wagga campus.

Courses to be merged

CSU's renowned media courses are being consolidated, with Communications, Theatre Media and Creative Industries being merged into a single degree.

CSU Theatre Media graduate, Abby Gallaway, said the consolidation of her former course was devastating.

"That Theatre Media degree is really unique in the way that it's created," Ms Gallaway said.

"A lot of people enter that degree knowing that they're passionate about the arts but not sure where they can go as a career.

"The degree means that you are able to try out a vast range of theatre and production roles that you don't really get in other theatre degrees."

Ms Gallaway is touring her own show after winning a scholarship while studying at CSU.

She said she believed communications lecturers had battled university red-tape for some time.

"The vibe I got was that they were constantly having to fight against the bureaucracy of the university and I think that's still happening now."

'End of an era'

Former lecturer and course co-ordinator for Acting, Design for Theatre and Television and Television Production at CSU in Wagga Wagga, Pat Sproule, said the changes were sad, but inevitable.

"We had a lot of pressures back when I was involved with the courses with some difficulties bringing students into courses," he said.

"They're fairly specialised courses which had quite a niche and were well regarded by industry but equally not broad appeal courses to the students that might be applying at the time.

"It's potentially the end of an era, but times are tough."

In a statement, CSU said 48 of the affected courses either had no, or low, enrolments and were not viable to continue.

The NTEU said this was no justification for cutting the degrees and the real reason they were being cut was to save money.

"Specialised courses and upper level courses almost always have low enrolments, that's the nature of specialisation and that's the nature of sequential and advanced learning," Mr Cahill said.

Students who have enrolled in courses that are being changed will be contacted by the university.

Video | The way it was : Theatre media at CSU

Story By | Joanna Woodburn and Verity Gorman