The Evidentiary Architecture of Public Value: Visibility and Auditability in Taiwanese Universities’ Social Responsibility Reporting

Universities increasingly narrate public value through social responsibility and sustainability reports, yet narration does not make such value auditable. This study develops and applies the Higher Education Public Value Index (HEPVI), a twelve-indicator formative content-analysis instrument positioned as a prototype diagnostic, not as a mature measurement scale. HEPVI assesses whether public-value claims in higher education reports are inspectable, comparable, and contestable. The framework is applied to a stratified purposive corpus of 40 publicly available Taiwanese university USR, social responsibility, and sustainability reports issued or available between 2021 and 2025. Two independent scoring passes assessed 480 case–indicator cells across Reporting Surface, Evidence Foundation, and Audit Architecture. Reporting Surface was high in both passes (82.50; 84.17), Evidence Foundation intermediate (59.50; 62.83), and Audit Architecture low (26.11; 31.39), producing Surface–Audit gaps of 56.39 and 52.78 points. These large gaps persisted across robustness checks. The reports display contribution effectively through SDG alignment, problem framing, outputs, and governance structures, but provide weaker baselines, contribution logic, and limitations disclosure. This auditability gap may constrain evidence-based steering, stakeholder scrutiny, and public trust. HEPVI offers universities, ministries, and accreditation bodies a formative diagnostic for strengthening reporting systems while cautioning against equating visibility with accountability.