Universities are cutting hundreds of teaching posts at the same time as creating 'woke' jobs with salaries that can reach £100,000, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Nearly half of UK vice-chancellors expect their university to be in financial deficit this year following a drop in the number of lucrative international students and the impact of inflation on fees, running costs and pension contributions.

As a result, academic departments are being merged and courses closed down, with some campuses facing strike action in opposition to the plans. Yet as hundreds of jobs are being cut, the equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) workforce appears immune.

Aston University in Birmingham, where 60 academics in the college of engineering and physical sciences are at risk of redundancy, has filled a £98,000-a-year post in 'People, Culture and Inclusion'.

At Oxford Brookes, mathematics and music programmes are being cut as part of a bid to save £2 million while seeking an 'anti-harassment and EDI adviser' on £39,000.

Nearly half of UK vice-chancellors expect their university to be in financial deficit this year following a drop in the number of lucrative international students and the impact of inflation on fees, running costs and pension contributions. Pictured: Oxford Brookes University

At Oxford Brookes (pictured), mathematics and music programmes are being cut as part of a bid to save £2 million while seeking an 'anti-harassment and EDI adviser' on £39,000.

Aston University in Birmingham (pictured), where 60 academics in the college of engineering and physical sciences are at risk of redundancy, has filled a £98,000-a-year post in 'People, Culture and Inclusion'

The Open University has recorded a £25 million operating deficit and launched a voluntary severance scheme for associate lecturers, but it recently filled two EDI vacancies, both offering salary packages of up to £46,223. One is a project officer working mainly on 'gender equality' who has to attend the office 'at least twice a year'.

Pupils taught by 'cheap' teaching assistants

Pupils are increasingly being taught 'on the cheap' by unqualified teaching assistants who are forced to step in and look after classes on their own.

Teaching assistants (TAs) – who earn as little as £14,000 a year – are meant to be used only to plug short gaps when teachers are sick or have quit. But a survey of nearly 6,000 TAs in England and Wales by public service union Unison found 39 per cent are covering classes for at least five hours a week, and 15 per cent for at least 11 hours a week.

Mike Short, head of education at Unison, said: 'Schools' budgets are so tight that, instead of getting in supply teachers to cover classes, heads are having to use TAs on the cheap.'

The Department for Education said last night: 'We have more teachers than ever before, with 468,000 in the workforce – a 27,000 increase on 2010.'

Restructuring at Portsmouth University is likely to lead to the loss of 47 jobs, but a head of EDI was recently hired on a salary of up to £76,462. And while 'double-figure redundancies' of fixed-term contract staff have hit the history department at University College London, it has launched a search for a senior-level 'director of equality, inclusion and culture' on an undisclosed salary.

Critics last night slammed the 'woke gravy train' as tutors face the axe. 

Professor Alan Smithers, Director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, warned that 'a tide of wokeness' had engulfed education. 

'Universities feel they have to bend over backwards to comply with bureaucratic regulations, activist students and the competing demands of different genders, races and faiths,' he said. 

'It seems that if it is a choice between affording a bright history or maths academic to teach students or EDI officers, universities are increasingly plumping for the latter to cover their backs.'

Recent research revealed the average university EDI team employs 11 people, and a Freedom of Information request by campaign group Alumni For Free Speech found that 47 universities spent £17.9 million a year on 515 dedicated staff.

Meanwhile, Queen Mary University of London defended its search for a £44,722-a-year EDI officer at the same time as making redundancies by merging its English, drama, languages, linguistics and film schools. 

A spokesman said the university was in a strong financial position and the voluntary severance scheme was in one faculty over a short period.

William Mackesy, co-founder of Alumni For Free Speech, said: 'We read that universities are in trouble and cutting courses. Why not cut the excess staff in EDI? That will save money and do the right thing at the same time.'

Professor Dennis Hayes, director of Academics For Academic Freedom, added: 'Universities have been ideologically captured by EDI because they have succumbed to victimhood culture. It is damaging to the aspiration of individuals in minorities – grouping them as 'victims' in need of help and a special education.'