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About 80 academic staff gathered, at short notice, to protest at the Federal Government's proposed funding cuts to implement the Gonski Report's recommendations.

Essentially, the report recommends more funding for primary and secondary schools and the Government has said it will find that money by reducing funding for universities.

Members of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), some wearing academic gowns and lab coats, made a stand on Stirling Highway during the morning peak-hour traffic.

With a backdrop of Winthrop Hall and bunches of purple balloons, the staff, joined by some students, held banners and waved signs proclaiming: Dumb Cuts Dumber Country and Cutting Education to Pay for Education ... what the?!!

Stuart Bunt, Professorial Fellow in Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology, and Vice-President (Academic) at UWA and WA Division President of the NTEU, said it was a crazy idea to penalise one part of the education sector to boost another part.

"It's robbing Peter to pay Paul," he said. "It just doesn't make sense. But there has been such a backlash that we feel there is a chance the report's recommendations may not be implemented.  So we must keep the pressure on the Federal Government."

Professor Bunt said Universities Australia was supporting its employees against the cuts.

Gabe Gooding, State Division secretary of the NTEU, was among the protesters.

"This was organised at the last minute and lots of our members had children to take to school and were unable to make other arrangements. But there will be another event in May which we are sure will be really well supported."

She said WA would be uniquely worse off as a result of these university funding cuts. "The decision to have WA children start school later will halve university enrolments and funding in 2015, just at the time when these cutbacks will really hit hard.

"Vice-Chancellors in WA have already started talking about reducing staff. That will mean fewer lecturers, bigger class sizes and poorer quality education.

"It defies belief that the Government would see poorer quality tertiary education as the best way to fund better school education," she said.

More than $2 billion will be cut from the tertiary sector and redirected into primary and secondary schools across the nation to help fund the Gonski reforms.

The Vice-Chancellor, Paul Johnson said, in an email to all staff: "This is a disappointing decision and appears to contradict the Government's own goals of having 10 Australian universities ranked in the world top 100.

"These funding cuts are highly regrettable, and they will have a significant impact on the University and our students.

"While we are still working through the detail of the changes to understand what it means for us, a quick calculation based on our current funding levels shows UWA could be impacted by up to $10 million annually."

The proposals not only include direct funding cuts to universities, but also changes to students' HECS debts and cuts to start-up scholarships and up-front payments.

"I want to assure you that we are working closely with our national representative bodies, the Group of Eight and Universities Australia, to illustrate publicly and politically what impact these funding cuts will have on the sector," Professor Johnson said.