Determinants of academic desertion: A case study in a Peruvian university

Bardales E.S.; Carrasco Rituay A.M.; Marín Y.R.; Caro O.C.; Fernández M.T.; Santos R.C. · Power and Education (2026) · DOI: 10.1177/17577438241312617

Resumen

University dropout has a social impact on students who do not complete their higher education studies since it limits job opportunities and personal development. Therefore, the present study aimed to determine the factors influencing academic dropout in a Peruvian public university. A non-experimental, descriptive methodology was used with a sample of 50 dropout students; to whom a questionnaire was applied. The results show that socioeconomic factors have a greater impact on student dropout; furthermore, the factors that influence dropout differ according to the length of academic studies. These factors differ depending on the study area; personality and sociocultural factors have a greater incidence in engineering and social sciences. It is concluded that university dropout is not explained by a single factor but by the interaction of various elements of a socioeconomic, academic, and personal nature. © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional Toribio Rodríguez de Mendoza de Amazonas