Institutional Management of the Alumni Community and Quality Assurance in Higher Education: A Descriptive Case Study of a University Model

Quality assurance in higher education increasingly depends on the capacity of institutions to transform stakeholder engagement into usable evidence for decision-making and continuous improvement. Among external stakeholders, alumni represent a potentially strategic but underutilized source of information on the relevance of training processes and their alignment with professional trajectories. However, the existence of alumni engagement does not guarantee its integration into formal quality assurance systems. This study analyzes how an institutional alumni management model is designed to articulate graduate engagement with internal quality assurance processes. Adopting a qualitative case study approach based on documentary analysis, the research examines the organizational architecture of a Chilean university, focusing on the mechanisms through which alumni participation is expected to be translated into evidence for academic decision-making. The findings show that the model combines strong relational infrastructures with emerging mechanisms for data capture and circulation. However, the institutionalization of processes for interpreting and using evidence remains less developed, revealing an asymmetry between participation, data production, and decision-making. Based on these results, the study conceptualizes alumni integration into quality assurance as a multi-stage process involving participation, data capture, circulation, and use, highlighting the organizational conditions required for each stage. The study contributes by proposing a process model of institutional translation that identifies the organizational breakdowns through which alumni engagement may remain disconnected from formal quality assurance processes. In doing so, it shows that the effectiveness of quality assurance systems depends not on the availability of data alone, but on the governance arrangements that enable evidence to be interpreted, circulated, and used.