About 40 per cent of existing university degrees will soon be obsolete and traditional undergraduate or postgraduate degrees could disappear within a decade, global accounting firm Ernst and Young says.

Universities will also need to begin the move towards "lifelong learning", that is delivered largely online, in the next five years to survive, according to the firm's new research paper on the university of the future and its Oceania education sector leader Catherine Friday.

Michael Nguyen, a marketing executive in Sydney, said his three-year university degree did little to prepare him for his job. Credit:Jessica Hromas

"A lot of the content of degrees no longer matches the actual work that students will be doing," Ms Friday said.

"There will most likely be much more work-integrated learning in tertiary courses, which is not necessarily students doing work experience but firms co-developing the curriculum and actually getting students to work through complex real-life problems under the mentorship of academic and industry leaders."