This study aimed to identify the causes of dropout in courses offered at servers administrative staff in a Federal Institution of Higher Education in the Federal District. Among the different concepts of dropout adopted the design of Silva Filho (2007), which considers the situation in which the student does not complete a course in which enrolled in any of its phases (beginning, middle or near the end). It was adopted as a qualitative research methodology with the use of document analysis techniques and semi-structured interviews. Qualitative research sought to identify the causes of the dropout, their indices by period and strategies for their reduction. The results revealed that the highest dropout rates are presented at the beginning of the course. These were motivated by organizational factors such as, lack of support from management, overwork, lack of information about the rules for supply of courses and class schedule. It was also found that the causes of dropout are similar to those found in several studies, although the focus of this research is the dropout of classroom courses in higher education and not training courses, although some aspects of reality typical of IFES has been evidenced in this study. Also presented were suggestions of strategies that aimed at reducing dropout.