University Vice-chancellor Prof Sir David Skegg said this week the department was one of four areas reviewed by an Otago University task force established last year.
The other areas are the design studies department, the department of accountancy and business law and the department of finance and quantitative analysis, and the College of Education.
University officials have said that, in some of those areas, the possibility of merging parts of existing departments was under consideration.
It is understood that one option being considered is for the social work department to be brought together with sociology and gender studies - currently part of the anthropology, gender studies and sociology department - to form a new department.
The social work department, which faces proposed academic restructuring and possible staff cuts, has been strongly supported in the curriculum review report.
Several recommendations were also made to strengthen the department's finances and further increase its academic development.
Maintaining the department was with the proviso that savings within its operation would lead to a balanced operating account by the end of the 2011 academic year.
The Otago Daily Times has obtained a copy of a report, produced in October last year by a five-strong university curriculum review panel, convened by Otago University Associate Prof Sue Court.
Approached for comment yesterday about several aspects of the report, university officials said it was premature to comment while consultation and decision-making were still under way.
The report said there was a lack of Government recognition of the need for a "higher funding differential" to support the field-work component of social work education, and continued submissions should be made to the Ministry of Education.
If, to some extent, the universities needed to underwrite social work education, this could be "only to mutual benefit".
"Certainly, the discontinuation [or serious disablement] of social work within Otago University would not be viewed in a positive light by the wider community."
Social work's practitioners were "poorly recompensed" but social work was "absolutely vital for the wellbeing of the country".
Since the dissolution of the former School of Social Sciences within the humanities division, the stand-alone status of the social work department had become "increasingly insecure financially".
This curriculum review had been conducted largely in response to an increasing operational deficit in the department, amounting to about $300,000 last year in the 2009 academic year.
Savings and efficiencies could be made through the implementation of the panel's recommendations, so that the deficit was "reduced to zero in 2011".
The panel did not recommend transferring the social work teaching and research to the polytechnic sector, as had been suggested.
Otago University would be "losing highly-regarded programmes" and the discipline was "research-supported with increasing need for specialisation".
The possibility of social work joining sociology within the university anthropology department had been discussed, but "there is little attraction to the concept from either side, on the grounds that sociology is theoretically driven whereas social work is more applied".
The social work department's degrees were "held in very high regard" in the social work profession.
The department also produced a significant number of graduates, including "the highest proportion of Maori and Pacific students" in the university, with its graduates gaining "nearly 100% immediate employment".
Departmental staff had also been improving their research profile.
