Building Professional Resilience in Accounting Higher Education: A Multi-Level Framework for the Digital-Intelligent Era

Digital intelligence is changing how accounting information is produced, assured, interpreted, and governed, yet higher education responses often remain limited to adding isolated software or analytics courses. This conceptual paper investigates professional resilience as a more comprehensive basis for reforming accounting-related degree programs. Professional resilience is defined as the multi-level capacity of programs, faculty, and students to anticipate technological change, adapt learning and professional practice, and transform established routines while preserving accounting’s public-interest responsibilities. Through a structured synthesis of accounting education, professional learning, and resilience literature, the paper develops a framework comprising five mutually reinforcing dimensions: a purpose-anchored curriculum architecture, human–AI collaborative pedagogy and assessment, reflective and situated professional learning, faculty and organizational capability, and ethical and inclusive professional identity formation. The framework is translated into a staged implementation approach covering mission diagnosis, curriculum mapping, controlled pilots, institutionalization, and assurance of learning. Particular attention is given to constructive alignment, feedback literacy, responsible technology use, equitable access, and the avoidance of both technological determinism and defensive curriculum preservation. The analysis contributes a distinctive account of resilience that connects student development with program-level governance rather than treating adaptability as an individual trait. For universities, it offers design principles for building accounting programs that can revise themselves without abandoning disciplinary rigor or professional judgment. The framework is conceptual and does not claim empirical effectiveness; future research should examine its propositions through longitudinal, comparative, and practice-based studies.