The scale of educational failure among students determines the study of its foundations and factors. The purpose of the article is to determine the factors of the academic environment that aff ect the educational (un) success of students, based on a secondary analysis of research results. In the article, the academic environment is considered as a set of three components — infrastructural, community and axiological. As the grounds for educational failure the author singled out insuffi ciently comfortable conditions for study and life; the attitude of teachers towards students as objects of infl uence; the discrepancy between the existing corporate culture of the university and the preferred one.