Acting vice-chancellor Professor John Germov said the university expected the recession to drive up enrolments by up to 30 per cent.

"It's hard to know where that will land but at the moment it's looking at 25 to 30 per cent up on last year on preferences, which that doesn't mean it will equate to that many students but it's a great sign," Professor Germov said.

"It's looking up for the whole sector. Part of what happens when you have a recession is you tend to have this sort of counter-cyclical process where enrolments go up."

At the completion of its early offer program on August 31, the university registered a 171 per cent increase in applications for the 2021 entry. That amounts to 2176 applications for the program as compared to 808 from last year.

It comes after the university announced in July that up to 48 courses with low or no enrolments will be cut, while 61 courses will be either consolidated onto a single campus or will have their delivery mode altered.

Asked whether the enormous enrolment increase will lead to some of the slashed courses being re-instated, Professor Germov said he did not expect so.

"Most of the courses that were reduced, we reduced offerings but most are still available in some other format, either online - given we're the number one online provider in the country - or at another campus," Professor Germov said.

"The other courses that we will be stopping are due to the lack of demand. We just had too few students and we don't see that likely to increase in the future."

Since the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic, the university has also announced the need to implement drastic staff reductions to meet its expected $80 million revenue decline.

Professor Germov further addressed the rumours that several high profile members of staff have left the university in the wake of the redundancy roll out. He said: "Most of the staff who have elected to leave have done so voluntarily".

"We've had a couple of senior executives resign their position and that's just one of those things that happens every now and then, you have a cycle or a confluence of events where people have decided to either retire, resign or pursue other opportunities," he said.

"I think they were personal decisions and choices of the individuals. You're seeing quite a bit of that in the sector, I think, you're seeing quite a number of movements at a number of universities."

Professor Germov also said that the university continues to expect the return of vice-chancellor Professor Andrew Vann at the end of this year.

"He's still on his sabbatical, and that's for six months until December," he said.