Griffith University’s art school, the Queensland College of Art (QCA), has announced it will scrap its bachelor of photography – part of broader cuts at the university which will see 144 positions axed across all faculties. The school that counts Venice Biennale artist Tracey Moffatt among its alumni announced the decision late on Wednesday, along with confirmation that the bachelor of creative and interactive media would go as well. The news comes just three weeks after the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney announced it was closing its doors after 46 years of operation. It follows a string of tertiary institutions taking the razor to their fine arts and performing arts faculties, including the ANU’s School of Art and Design, the University of Newcastle’s major in theatre and Monash University’s Centre for Theatre and Performance. The cuts at QCA mean the loss of 10 full-time positions – about 30% of its staff, not all academic – as part of a broader restructure by Griffith University. It follows a $700m predicted shortfall in revenue over the next five years, due to the loss of international students. . The two degrees cut from QCA are among a dozen removed from Griffith University faculties under the restructure. The university’s vice-chancellor, Prof Carolyn Evans, described Wednesday’s decision – which followed a four-week consultation period – as “one of the most challenging days in [Griffith University’s] history”. “I am very conscious that every person who is impacted will have families, mortgages and other commitments, and this will be a very distressing time for them,” she said in a statement. The QCA Students, Alumni & Community Support Group had attracted almost 12,000 signatories to its Save Our Staff and Studios petition. Group spokesperson Kathleen O’Hagan, a third-year fine art student, told the Guardian that while students and staff were relieved that a handful of jobs slated to go had now been saved – including at the school’s printmaking, jewellery and small objects studios – the eradication of the photography and creative media degrees would have far-reaching consequences. “At the QCA we’re really interdisciplinary, so if you cut a leg off, and take away the teachers and the software that teach practical handmade skills, it’s the whole community that bleeds,” she said. The National Tertiary Education Union told Guardian Australian the University’s cuts were unnecessary and short-sighted. “There are other places the university could have gone to make up the predicted shortfall [in revenue], which is a short-term pain,” said Michael McNally, the union’s Queensland division secretary. “They could have further deferred their massive capital works program. “To make job cuts at this time of the year, when some faculties are reporting higher enrolments [in 2021] than this time last year, shows a lack of caring.” The decision follows the Australian National University’s School of Art & Design proposed funding cuts, announced in November, that will terminate courses in furniture-making, jewellery and objects to counteract the school’s $3.5m deficit. In the performing arts, the University of Newcastle’s major in theatre has been suspended for 2021, while Monash University in Melbourne has scrapped its theatre program completely. In July, the University of NSW announced the merger of its art and design faculty into the built environment and arts and social sciences faculties. The universities have invariably attributed the cuts to the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting loss of international students, which contributed $10bn in fees to Australian tertiary institutions in 2019. The National Association for the Visual Arts’ acting CEO, Penelope Benton, said she believed universities’ fine arts faculties were taking a disproportionate hit in the Covid-19 crunch. “The deficits that universities are showing aren’t that different [from other sectors] ... and they really do not need to make such drastic cuts,” she told the Guardian. “It is looking like many of the universities are looking very simply at their spreadsheets and saying, ‘OK, studios take up that much space and what, you’ve only got 30 students doing that? It doesn’t make any sense real estate-wise when we’ve got these other lecture theatres that can fit 200 students in’.” Benton said the wider messaging from the federal government over universities’ role in turning out job-ready graduates had not helped. In June, the education minister, Dan Tehan, announced that the future student contribution for a three-year humanities degree would more than double – from $20,400 to $43,500. “I think universities have a legitimate fear that there could be less people applying for and enrolling in humanities degrees in the future, just because of the cost,” she said. “That’s a huge part of it, but not all of it. Throughout this year, we’ve heard language from the federal government that the arts are non-essential and this has had a tremendous impact. “To hear that kind of language is quite demoralising. Universities are picking up on that ‘non-essential arts’ message and making budget decisions with this in mind. “The impact has been huge.”