From Social Vulnerability to Student Retention: Information Literacy as an “Antidote” to Academic Dropout

Abstract

This article argues that information literacy forms a structural “antidote” to dropout in Brazilian higher education, insofar as it addresses the multiple dimensions of academic vulnerability, understood as a particular expression of social vulnerability. The research is exploratory and bibliographic in nature, with references selected according to theoretical-conceptual relevance and alignment with the objectives of the article. The discussion and results indicate that academic vulnerability cannot be reduced to income insufficiency, as it encompasses an epistemic dimension (here identified as epistemic injustice) that remains neglected in institutional retention policies. The university library is considered one of the institutional spaces best positioned to operationalize this epistemic restitution, provided that librarians and information professionals move beyond passive service models and begin to integrate lifelong learning into academic reception processes, while also promoting the development of curricular partnerships with the faculty. Information literacy, in its critical, political, and emancipatory genesis, is regarded as a structural “antidote” to dropout, acting upon the mechanisms that fuel student abandonment and academic attrition. More than that, developing such literacy among more vulnerable students is not a matter of offering a complementary service: it is restoring their condition as legitimate epistemic subjects, which the symbolic violence of dominant social structures systematically denies them.