While some will start their studies online from their home countries, hoping border restrictions will be lifted to allow them to travel to Australia, the reality is many will not, said Federation University vice chancellor Professor Helen Bartlett.

"The focus at the beginning (of the pandemic) was on China but our students, although they come from many different countries, our largest cohorts are from India and Nepal and they were already in the country by the time borders started to close," Professor Barlett said.

"So we were fine for the first semester but the problem is going to be the second - we won't have a second intake for the year and it would have been in the low thousands as we have international students represented across our own campuses and our partner campuses who offer our degrees in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide."

In the coming years the university will broaden its recruitment of international students to other countries to avoid an over-reliance on students from only one or two countries.

The loss of so many international fee-paying students will also put a large dent in the university's finances going forward.

"This year we will see a deficit in our budget and that is on the back of an extremely successful last two years where we really got on top of the university's finances to be in a very strong position, which will help us a lot to traverse the current situation," she said.

"Our focus is on minimising that deficit as much as we can through all the usual measures."

New staff appointments and building infrastructure projects have been put on hold while they university reassesses their future.

"We don't anticipate being stopped in our tracks, it's about reprioritising and looking how we sequence things over the next year or two," Prof Bartlett said.

Other parts of the university's strategic plan, such as online learning, have accelerated and Prof Bartlett has assured domestic students that they too are a priority to support through the pandemic until face to face classes can resume, although they may look slightly different with more reliance on online modules and extra flexibility for students.

Prof Barlett thinks regional universities could have the upper hand in recovery of the tertiary sector, with certain attributed that larger universities cannot match.

"We think regional universities will have a lot of added value, post pandemic," she said.

"They may be seen as safer places with more space, smaller classes in areas with a lower cost of living. These things may start to look more attractive, particularly to regional students, than heading for the bright lights of the city, and I think we might see some adjustment in the coming years and certainly we will promote the added value we think we can offer."

Federation University also hopes to develop more short courses to provide 'micro-credentials', courses for students in areas of need and to build further research aligned with the needs of regional Australia.

The university is already building more allied health courses at other campuses, which will begin in Ballarat in the coming years including occupational therapy and physiotherapy, and a stronger research focus on health and wellbeing including the provision of digital mental health support to rural communities.

And there's also the nuts and bolts of just how to transition staff and students back to campus when restrictions ease.

"We are going to have to space our classes differently, they will be smaller, and I think staff are going to be anxious about working in crowded office space," Prof Bartlett said.

"I can see us certainly in the next year, continuing with a blend of online and face to face delivery with a mix of working from home and working from the campus."

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She said staff and students had learned new skills and praised their ability and willingness to transition to a new way of education.

"Fundamentally it's about student support and for students to continue having a quality learning experience. We want them to succeed. We want to keep those students because it would be a terrible time for them to drop out because of difficulties in online delivery. We know this is not going to be permanent - we want to see them through this period and continue on."

She said it was particularly important for students nearing the end of their courses to make it to the finish line.

"Nurses, teachers, IT specialists, business experts, they are all going to be so important for our local economies," she said.

And it is hoped these about-to-graduate students, and those who would have celebrated their graduations at ceremonies in March, will have the chance to mark the end of their courses at some kind of 'modified ceremony' before the end of the year.

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