One crucial topic in higher education that have negative consequences is student dropout. In academic organizations there is a duality between retention and dropout. This situation is not only detrimental to the student who sees his or her dreams of completing a professional career cut short, but also to the educational organizations. Knowing the factors that cause the student dropout allows educational organizations to take actions to prevent dropout. The results of the literature review on factors related to dropout, as well as the categories used by the authors to categorize them, are presented in this article. The results show that institutional, academic, individual, economic, and vocational are the categories most used by authors. Knowing the determining factors will make it possible to analyze how these factors influence dropout.