The share of university students commencing Education degrees has plunged to its lowest level in at least 27 years, according to a Fairfax Media analysis of Department of Education figures.

Once the most popular field of study, Education has suffered the sharpest drop among 27 fields of study included in the analysis, tumbling to just 8.3 per cent of commencing students in 2015 from a high of 17.5 per cent in 1989, the earliest available data.

"Education had a big crash in the early 1990s because there was an oversupply of teachers. [Then premier] Jeff Kennett started sacking teachers in Victoria, among other things, and people realised there weren't jobs in education and they moved elsewhere," said Grattan Institute Higher Education Program director Andrew Norton.

"In more recent years we've again seen Education applications go off the boil ... and that reflects bad news in NSW and other jurisdictions about graduate outcomes."