As frontline academic staff and librarians face job cuts, the University of Auckland has defended spending thousands on exclusive Northern Club memberships for its top executives.

Since 2014 the University has spent more than $33,000 to give eight senior staff members entry to the exclusive central Auckland club, once notorious for excluding women and Māori.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Stuart McCutcheon said he used the club, adjacent to the university campus, as a function centre to host international guests and manage important relationships. "The people who have the memberships are people who are heads of the faculties, or deputy vice chancellors, and they are engaged in fundraising activity and managing relationships," he said.

But it comes as student enrolments drop at a number of tertiary institutions, especially in the big cities where living costs are highest.

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The biggest polytech, Unitec, this week reported a $31 million deficit after a seven per cent drop in student numbers. And the biggest university, Auckland, has blamed falling enrolments for proposed lay-offs in the education, social work, and arts faculties.

The University is in consultation with staff around reducing jobs. A two-phase process began last week, with 40 job cuts proposed.

Jessica Palairet, a fifth-year law and arts student and vice-president of the students' association, said the spending was "indefensible".

"It's absolutely not appropriate, in my view, at a time where the university is quoting tight financial constraints as a justification for cutting entire language programs, cutting libraries, seriously reducing the size of our specialist librarian staff and other staff.

"It's kind of shocking that you have to, in order to keep up your international business relations, spend almost $40,000 so that the Vice Chancellor can go across the road to have a meeting rather than have it in his office. That makes no sense to me at all."

In the members' dining room at the Northern Club, McCutcheon and his fellow executives can enjoy oysters or wagyu carpaccio for entrees, and 12-hour pork shoulder or seared eye fillet for their mains.

MAARTEN HOLL University of Auckland vice chancellor Stuart McCutcheon.

But McCutcheon insisted the Club memberships were justifiable. "If you want to put it in context ... in those last four years, we would have raised $200 million in philanthropic funding for the university. None of that funding benefits the people who are on the list of memberships.

"If it's six or seven thousand a year, last year we raised $64m in donor funding. All of that funding goes to support student scholarships for research activities, to support new staff, or people who are being hired into the university."

He rejected any suggestion the memberships could be seen as extravagant. "I think any suggestion of that nature would be a nonsense. I'm afraid there's no scandal."

Northern Club memberships were purchased for McCutcheon as well as the deputy vice chancellor of strategic engagement, the deans of faculty science, law, engineering and medical health sciences; and the directors of education initiatives, and alumni relations and development.

All of those staff members had regular subscriptions since October 2014, aside from the Director of Education Initiatives who had just one year's membership. The cost of a year's membership rose from $1120 to $1200 between 2014 and 2018.

The exclusive club, in Auckland's CBD, was once the Royal Hotel but began operating as a gentleman's club – initially billed as a place for "movers and shakers" – more than 100 years ago. Women were not admitted until 1991.

Membership opens doors to "interesting events and exclusive opportunities", its website says, including exclusive events with speakers like Sir Graham Henry or the chief executive of Uber, "luxury Champagne tastings" and "master cheese classes".

The club also arranges preferential tickets, pre-drinks and transport for members wanting to attend Auckland's big concerts and sporting events.

Tertiary Education Union spokesman Enzo Giordani said the spending was "a bad look".

"More than the money, it actually symbolises how the university hierarchy works.

"It symbolises a culture of a very corporate atmosphere at the top of the food chain.

"The further on down the food chain you go we've got staff who aren't happy at all."