Student retention in higher education refers to the prolonged stay of the student who needs more time than expected in the curriculum to complete the course. This problem affects both private and public higher education institutions. For public institutions, retention results in additional expenses, delay in the entry of new professionals in the training area and, for the student, delay in training and entry into the job market, in addition to demotivation that can lead to evasion or abandonment of the course. In this context, this work has as its general objective to analyze the possible causes of student retention in the face-to-face undergraduate course in Library Science at the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM), with specific objectives: to raise results of studies already carried out on the subject in other higher education institutions, especially in face-to-face undergraduate courses in Library Science in Brazil; to collect statistical data from UFAM and the Library Science course on retention in the databases of the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (INEP), linked to the Ministry of Education (MEC) and from other sources, and finally to identify with the coordination of the Library Science course at UFAM the retained students who entered in 2016 and apply a questionnaire as a collection instrument. The research is descriptive and exploratory with a quantitative approach. From the academic data of these students and from the application of a questionnaire with closed and structured questions in the sections: student profile, information about the library science course and causes of retention, possible factors that contributed to the retention of this group were identified. As for the results obtained, at the end of the research, a retention rate of 66.1% of those who entered in 2016 was found, and among the causes that contributed to this result are: difficulty in reconciling study and work, with 83.3%; abandonment of discipline and demotivation, both with 50%. The result indicates that socioeconomic problems are the main factors that contribute to student retention.
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