近年來台灣私立大專院校處於供過於求之困境。在面對有限的資源，學校必須有效達成成本控制及向外募集資金，其須設立一套良好之會計制度與可靠的財務報表給予外界評估。而面對學校弊案陸續爆發，顯示了主管機關未能充分有效監督及管理私立大專院校，所以須要求私校財務報告透明公開。因此，雙方對財務資訊的需求，說明了會計師查核簽證對私校之重要性。而會計師簽證私立大專院校財務報表已實行多年，加上教育部實施不同聘任會計師的政策，其對於私校所產生之效益如何，是本研究探討的主題中心。
本研究結合代理理論與訊息傳遞理論，主張會計師查核簽證之公信力與控制特質能提昇學校之經營績效。本研究以投入導向之DEA模型評估私立大專院校之經營效率與Malmquist跨期經營效率變動。以五大與非五大會計師事務所衡量審計品質高低，利用Tobit迴歸與OLS迴歸，探討私立大專院校所委任的會計師事務所審計品質與其經營績效及跨期經營績效變動是否有關聯性。
實證結果得知：（1）私立大專院校之經營績效及經營績效變動與會計師事務所審計品質有關聯性。說明了在控制其他變數下，委任高審計品質會計師事務所查核學校，不僅當年度經營效率較高，且經營效率相較於前一年度也較進步；（2）教育部公開招標指派會計師期間，其整體會計師審計品質較低，私立大專院校之經營績效表現較差，此結果可提供給教育部聘任會計師或制定相關會計政策時作為參考。

Private universities and colleges have been an oversupplied higher education market in Taiwan for recent years. Due to limited resources, those private schools have to not only achieve cost control effectively but also raise funds efficiently from outsides.To do so, they need to establish a sound accounting system and reliable financial statement for outside contributors. A number of scandals happened to private schools hints an ineffective administration and supervision of authorities to those private schools. For this reason, authorities request private schools to provide transparent financial reports. To sum up, both parties have the demand of financial information which means auditing by CPA is important for private universities and colleges. However, it has already been many years for private university and colleges to engage CPA in auditing financial reports. In addition, Ministry of Education has applied different policies for engaging CPA. Hence, this research has an important issue that how is it the benefit of private universities and colleges.
This research combines agency hypothesis and signaling hypothesis to support that credibility and control of CPA can improve operating performance of private universities and colleges. We apply DEA to estimate the input-oriented operating efficiencies and Malmquist productivity of private universities and colleges. Besides, we measure audit quality by Big Five and non-Big Five CPA firms and adopt Tobit regression and OLS regression to evaluate whether audit quality of CPA firms is associated with operating performance and productivity change of private universities and colleges.
The empirical results indicate: (1) audit quality of CPA firms is positively related to operating performance and productivity change of private universities and colleges. In other words, private universities and colleges audited by Big Five CPA firms have better operating performance and productivity. (2) the policy for engaging CPA during academic years 2001-2003 has low-balling so that audit quality is lower. Moreover, operating performance of private universities and colleges during 2001-2003 are worse than during 2004-2006. The results show this research can provide the Ministry of Education while engagsing CPA or making the relevant policy has a reference value.

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