The head of UNSW has laid out his vision for the future of Australian universities.

UNSW's president and vice-chancellor Ian Jacobs says bite-sized degrees, on-demand courses and online-only programs for international students will be used to meet the growing global demand for tertiary education.

He also believes students may initially spend far less time at university than they do right now, but return throughout their careers to update their skills.

“Universities need to evolve and one of the challenges is the changing work environment and the need for people to have lifelong education ... we're already thinking about short courses that fit with what industry want,” Professor Jacobs said.

Experts say up to 40 per cent of existing university degrees will soon be obsolete.

University of NSW pro-vice-chancellor Geoffrey Crisp says the university’s new post-graduate courses are the equivalent of about one-eighth of a semester's workload.

“We're talking three units of credit, which is the equivalent of 75 hours of effort, which includes all the learning, assessments and reading,” Professor Crisp said.

“Participants can stack those to get a master's degree ... and the things they do in [those courses] are designed around them immediately incorporating them into whatever their workplace activities are.

“We're changing the way we do face-to-face learning so we will, like many other universities, be having [fewer] big lecture rooms full of students, a lot of that will be delivered online.”