ALMOST 400 staff at Monash will take redundancy as Australia's biggest university seeks to offset an expected decline in overseas student income.

Vice-chancellor Ed Byrne yesterday said 356 full-time equivalent staff had accepted voluntary redundancy packages. Monash has just under 8000 staff.

More than 800 staff had applied for redundancy after Professor Byrne's October announcement that Monash had to find $45 million in savings.

Monash College, a key conduit for international students, had suffered a 30 per cent decline in enrolments. Professor Byrne blamed onerous visa rules, the high Australian dollar and a sense that Australia no longer welcomed students.

He said the governing body had given approval for up to $30m in Monash University Foundation reserves to be spent on a one-off round of redundancies.

This approval was conditional on the redundancies being handled in a way that promoted the reforms of Professor Byrne's "Monash futures" agenda.

"So what we've gone through is not a random letting go of staff to meet a target but a significant restructuring of the university," he said. From next year, academics would be judged against new performance standards for research and teaching.

Monash had been streamlining administration such as information technology, finance and human resources.

Professor Byrne said the only academics allowed to take redundancies were those who would not meet next year's performance measures. And no professional staff member whose position would need to be filled was offered a package, he said.

As part of the Monash futures restructure, the university had introduced an "education-focused career trajectory".

He said any new performance system had "to recognise and hold within the organisation academics who are passionate and dedicated teachers but aren't research active".

"Our expectation is that, eventually, 5 [per cent] to 10 per cent of our academic staff across the university will move into an education-focused career trajectory, which is going to be every bit as prestigious here as the more conventional research-teaching portfolio.

"From senior lecturer upwards the expectation is that one is engaging in significant creative innovation around education."

This might involve development of new courses and pedagogies or the embrace of new educational technology.

"[As a] full professor on an education-focused trajectory, one has to be an internationally renowned educator," Professor Byrne said.

He said the criteria for the new education-focused role had been exacting. "The one thing this category is not is a job description for the failed researcher," he said.