民國70年代末期爆發國際商專等數起涉嫌貪瀆事件，教育部為戢止私校校園貪瀆之風，自79學年度開始要求私立專科以上學校聘請會計師查核財務報表，而所需審計公費半數由教育部負擔。施行至今，成效如何並未被正式評估，因此本研究目的乃在探討會計師簽證私立大學校院財務報表之效益。本研究主張經由會計師的查核簽證，可使學校的財務資料更可靠，因而減少決策錯誤所產生之損失，以及減少資產被盜用或浪費的可能性。換言之，減少營運無效率即為本研究所著重之會計師簽證效益。研究內容分成二部分：首先利用民國78-83期間之資料，比較強制前、強制後會計師簽證是否提昇私校之營運效率；再用84-87期間之資料，探討高、低審計品質（以是否屬五大事務所衡量之）與營運效率之關聯性。針對第一部分研究內容，由於年代久遠，資料蒐集不易，或許受限於樣本量不足，依照法規要求實施審計後，會計師之查核簽證並未顯著影響新受查學校之營運效率。然而在第二部分研究內容上，年代推至最近，樣本量較增後，Tobit迴歸結果顯示，高低審計品質差異確為受查學校營運效率差異之顯著因素之一，審計品質愈高，受查學校之營運效率亦愈高。

Subsequent to a number of financial scandals occurred at private colleges during late 1980s, Ministry of Education in Taiwan began to require the audit of financial statements by independent accountants for private colleges and universities. The Ministry also started to reimburse half of their audit costs to private colleges and universities. The value of such a policy has not been subject to academic interrogations. Hence, the purpose of this study was to examine the benefits of independent auditing of financial statements in private universities. We argued that when more audited reliable information was available, the benefits of auditing would include: (1) fewer or less costly decision errors and (2) more reduction in possible financial losses or wastes of assets. In short, the reduction of school operating inefficiency is the most valuable benefit of auditing. Two research questions were investigated: (1) what outcome of the financial statements audit could be evidenced when school efficiency before and after the mandated audit regulation was compared, and (2) what impact did audit quality exemplify on school efficiency. The results showed that the school operating efficiency was not significantly different before and after the mandated audit regulation, possibly because of lack of the power caused by insufficient sample size. However, when we got the larger sample size during 1995-1998, there was a positive association between audit quality and school efficiency. Auditors with higher quality are associated with efficient universities, i.e. higher audit quality is allied to better school efficiency.