The country's biggest universities say they are "under assault" and have launched an extraordinary attack on the Morrison government over a fresh round of cuts to academic research.

Vice-chancellors are furious about a $134 million raid on research funding to pay for student places at regional universities - as well as other Coalition measures in the works including a free speech blitz, a "national interest test" for research grants and a new tax on enrolments.

"We are under assault on a number of different fronts – on teaching and learning, on research and on funding," the head of the Group of Eight major universities, Vicki Thomson, told Fairfax Media.

"You add all of those things together … I think universities are in a very precarious position - more precarious than we have ever been."

On Monday it emerged that $134 million being injected into regional universities would be raided from the Research Support Program, which funds researchers' salaries, laboratories and libraries.