The concept of education which is becoming more and more important in today's globalizing world cause the countries to undertake intense efforts to improve their education systems. It was also demonstrated by the studies aimed to improve the education systems that the duration of the students' stay within the existing school system was an important indicator of the quality of education. The international rankings on the prevalence of dropouts for Turkey seem to be bleak. Turkey ranks high in comparison to the countries compared in terms of its high dropout rate. This clearly shows that one of the problems that we have to deal with to improve the quality of the education system is the problem of dropouts. In the present study, the concept of dropout was examined in the light of previous studies. Initially in the study, the concept of dropout was defined, the dropout process and risk, and reasons for dropouts were addressed; and then the prevalence of dropout and its consequences in Turkey were explicated.