Vice chancellor Professor Duncan Bentley confirmed there would be fewer than five forced redundancies, but all staff members would be offered voluntary redundancies, though he did not put a target on the number of jobs to go.

Under the proposed restructure, the university's six schools will be amalgamated in to three "interdisciplinary centres" that align with existing research centres.

Professor Bentley outlined the proposed changes to staff on Monday.

The redundancies and proposed restructure come after almost two years of financial pressure resulting from COVID and a dramatic fall in the number of international students enrolled at the university.

Under the proposed new plan, an Education, Government and Community Centre would include education, humanities and social sciences, social welfare and Arts Academy and a Science, Innovation and Sustainable Economic Development would cover life sciences, geosciences, engineering, maths, IT and business.

A Health and Wellbeing Centre would cater for health care, public health, health services management, health informatics, health economics, occupational health, exercise and sports science, and psychology.

Professor Bentley said the restructure would strengthen ties between the university and business in the region, helping to grow jobs and economies.

"To attract both students and industry and government investment, we must become more agile and focussed on employer demand. It is clear through our program renewal project that future jobs growth and employer demand is changing, and ... our current School structure must change to reflect this and ensure we not only survive, but thrive," he said.

In 2018 under previous vice chancellor Professor Helen Bartlett the university's 12 faculties and schools were streamlined in to the current six new schools, with new deans recruited to oversee them.

That move came shortly after the Victorian auditor general warned the long term viability of the university was in jeopardy after it recorded its first ever financial deficit, coupled with a Federal Government funding freeze.

Professor Bentley admitted some staff might be unhappy with the changes.

"One of the things you have traditionally had in academia is a really old-fashioned, strict bureaucracy and governance structure but this will streamline it much more to what they want to do rather than spend hours on committees," he said.

"Essentially we will see some people say they are not wanting to be on this journey ... and what we are saying is if you don't like where the university is going and you didn't sign up for this, we want to make sure they can fit back in to the community."

In addition to outplacement and support offered as part of the redundancy deal, the university will offer scholarships to any outgoing staff who wish to retrain to pursue a different career.

National Teachers Education Union Federation University Branch president Dr Mathew Abbott warned regional Victoria would suffer as a result of the changes.

"We're extremely concerned about the impact of cuts on staff and the quality of regional education," said Dr Abbott.

"Our university's programs have already been cut to the bone, including a third of humanities staff who are being made redundant.

"Changes to management structures need to be invested in teaching capacity and high quality face-to-face learning. Instead, the proposal includes university-wide redundancies at teaching level, which will likely exacerbate existing problems and alienate students even further."

He said the "disgraceful proposal" would likely impact on support available to students.

Professor Bentley said the university needed to change to help drive innovation in the regions.

"As we come out in to a post-COVID world, work and education is changing and we need to change with it," he said.

"The bulk of employers (of our graduates) are government or small to medium enterprises so we've got to change our programs to suit where they are, coming out of COVID ... to focus on jobs for students and driving economic growth in our region."

Professor Bentley said the integration of TAFE, higher education and research, and being able to offer multi-disciplinary solutions and training programs from basic skills to PhD research was what employers were looking for.

Offering every undergraduate or TAFE student workplace learning throughout their studies was also key so graduates received training from employers as well as their course.

Professor Bentley said aligning the proposed new centres with the current Research Centres would build on industry collaboration and their ability to attract funding through research and innovation partnerships.

Dr Abbott said there was no evidence that adopting an industry-sponsored approach had been "rigorously market tested among employers, students, careers counsellors and parents".

"It's a high risk strategy that could do irreparable damage to education in the regions," he said.

"'Business start up' experimentation is old. It has been going on for two decades now and has not bore fruit - Ballarat is not the technophile or Silicon Valley phenomenon that was once promised."

Professor Bentley said this impact of the reduced number of international students would be felt for the next three years.

Although the federal government this week announced that fully-vaccinated international students would be allowed in to Australia from December 1 without needing to apply for a travel exemption, Professor Bentley did not expect large numbers to return until at least July or August next year in time for second semester.

"We will see a continued gap in international students," he said. "They can't get places on the plane yet, we still don't know the details of the digital passports, and the government, to be fair to them, still has to process all the visas.

"We have had two and a half years where we haven't had new international students enroll ... and we will have effectively three years where we will have an underload of international students.

"Hopefully by repositioning and reforming ourselves so we absolutely focus on employment and meeting skills needs, we will see a range of school leavers, career changers and people needing to up-skill and re-skill coming to Federation," he said.

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NTEU National President Dr Alison Barnes said the cuts added to the wholesale job losses across Australian universities.

"It comes after a year where 35,000 workers at public universities lost their jobs," Dr Barnes said.

"The Federal Government has allowed our sector to be smashed and regional Victorians will be worse off.

"The consequence of job losses is increased workloads and less support for staff and students.

"Redundancies will remove talent and work capacity, making it even harder for staff who are already struggling under the immense weight of unmanageable workloads."

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