The number of Victorian university graduates applying to become teachers has plunged by nearly 40 per cent in a year - a figure being blamed on employment concerns and the abolition of the Diploma of Education.
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The sharp drop has triggered concerns about a potential teacher shortage in the future.
It comes as the Andrews government vows to make teaching a more attractive profession by introducing tough new entry standards for undergraduate teaching courses.
On Wednesday, 1370 aspiring teachers received first round offers for graduate-entry teaching courses, down 47 per cent from the previous year.
There were 1708 applicants, a 39 per cent drop from 2016.
And 80 per cent of applicants received an offer, compared to 87 per cent the previous year, according to Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre data.
From this year, Victorian universities will only be allowed to offer two-year graduate entry initial teacher education programs, instead of one-year courses which were commonly known as the Diploma of Education.
Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership chair Professor John Hattie said these changes may have deterred some students from pursuing a teaching career.
"It doubles the costs, it is two years of income that they lose rather than one," he said.
But Professor Hattie said it was more likely that the drop in applicants was attributable to concerns about full-time work. Only 50 per cent of teaching graduates found full-time work, he said.
There is currently an oversupply of almost 2000 primary and secondary teachers in Victoria, but there are shortages in fields like secondary school maths, science and languages.
Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor Greg Craven - who chaired the federal government's teacher education ministerial advisory group - attributed the decline to a "continuous public attack on the quality of teaching".
"The market signals are telling kids, particularly bright kids, don't do teaching, it says you are stupid and there are no jobs," he said.
"They have invested a serious amount of their life and money in study and will be most vulnerable to an argument about unemployment."
He said those arguments were invalid, and there were plenty of jobs for teachers.
Professor Craven said there could be teacher shortages in the future, and larger class sizes, if this trend continued.
Monash University education dean Professor John Loughran said that constant chatter about a supposed shortage of teaching jobs had deterred some students.
"Whenever there is bad press about teaching the next year you see that impact on applicant numbers," he said.
He said that "hurdles" like the new compulsory literacy and numeracy test and a separate test which will measure non-academic skills like problem solving, leadership, empathy and resilience had also put off students.
Australian Education Union Victorian branch president Meredith Peace said she was not concerned about the decline in applications and offers and she doubted it would lead to a teacher shortage.
"It is hard to say whether this indicates a longer-term problem or not."
Round one offers for all other courses - including undergraduate teacher education courses - are set to be released on January 18.
Under reforms announced by Education Minister James Merlino in November, students wanting to enrol in an undergraduate teaching course will have to achieve a minimum ATAR of 65 in 2018. This will be raised to 70 the following year.
