From Offices to Vice-Rectorates: Institutional Isomorphism and the Organizational Ascent of Quality Assurance in Chilean Universities

Quality assurance has become a major force reordering the contemporary university, and in Chile, its most visible expression is the ascent of quality units, which have moved from peripheral offices to, in many cases, vice-rectorate rank. This article examines that trajectory through a descriptive–comparative documentary analysis reconstructing the hierarchical position of these units in the 51 universities recognized by the Ministry of Education and comparing it with the 2008–2009 and 2019 time points, distinguishing the state, traditional private, and private non-Council of Rectors subsectors. Read through neo-institutional theory, the results show that the quality unit has become universal and has consolidated at the top of the hierarchy, albeit unevenly, since vice-rectorate rank remains almost exclusively a private-sector phenomenon, now spreading to the traditional sector. The analysis is organized as a congruence test between the framework’s expectations and the observed patterns, complemented by exact and trend tests. The resulting distribution is consistent with a reading in which legal coercion accounts for the widespread existence of these units, while imitation and market signaling correspond to their elevation, so that isomorphism produces homogeneity within each subsector and divergence between them. The documentary design, however, describes a form whose substantive integration remains undemonstrated.