Level of compliance of accounting practices in higher education institutions with generally accepted accounting principles: A study on audit reports of Turkish Court of Accounts

The concept of audit refers to the activity of evaluating the evidence gathered and sharing the results with the relevant users in order to determine and report the conformity between the available information about economic actions and events and the predetermined and accepted criteria. Auditing in public institutions refers to the examination of the use of public resources in accordance with predetermined standards. The supervision of the compliance of the expenditures made by the administrations with the rules is carried out by the supreme audit organs on behalf of the parliaments. The Court of Accounts operates as a supreme audit body for this task in Turkey. The audit activity carried out by the Court of Accounts, which is the supreme audit body in our country, includes determining the efficient, effective and economical use of public resources in accordance with the law, reporting on the results of the audit and announcing them to the public. The primary aim of the study is to determine the prevalence level of these errors, to reveal the causes of these errors and to develop solutions for the prevention of errors, based on the findings of accounting errors as a result of the regularity audit carried out by the Court of Accounts for public universities. For this purpose, the audit reports of the Court of Accounts between the years 2012-2021 were examined and 2051 findings in the form of accounting errors were found. It has been determined that the most accounting error-related finding is in the Tangible Fixed Assets account group. Another purpose of the study is to examine whether there is a statistically significant difference between the findings of accounting errors obtained from the audit reports of universities and the age of universities, the number of internal auditors and financial services specialists working at universities. According to the results of the analysis, there was no statistically significant difference between the universities in terms of the age of the universities, the number of internal auditors and financial services specialists working at the universities, according to the average number of findings. Key Words: Audit, The Court of Accounts, Government Accounting