Fifty Years of Accounting Education Research: Global Trends and Insights From Bibliometric and Thematic Analysis

Accounting education continues to navigate a delicate balance between maintaining foundational technical skills and embracing digital transformation. This study argues that accounting education has evolved beyond its traditional technical focus into a multidimensional domain shaped by digital transformation, AI, sustainability, and ethical awareness. This study combines a systematic literature review, conducted under the guidelines of the PRISMA 2020 protocol, with bibliometric analysis to examine 2,362 peer-reviewed studies published between 1970 and 2024 in the Web of Science database. The findings reveal four main areas of concentration: pedagogical innovation, sustainability and ethics, technological advancement and curriculum reform. Highly cited studies, the themes that stand out are the alignment between qualifications and the labor market, students’ motivations, expectations and academic readiness, the impact of COVID-19 and crisis management in education, creative teaching practices, ethics and human values education. The analysis also shows that the United States, the UK and Australia dominate both publication output and collaboration networks, shaping global discourse but potentially constraining the diversity of pedagogical perspectives. Emerging research frontiers highlight the transformative role of artificial intelligence, data analytics and automation in reshaping accounting curricula, alongside growing attention to sustainability reporting, ESG frameworks and corporate social responsibility. These developments signal a shift toward interdisciplinary, competency-based education that balances technical proficiency with critical thinking, ethical reasoning and adaptability. Overall, the future of accounting education will depend on the integration of interdisciplinary approaches, industry-linked learning models and the embedding of ethical and digital competencies advancing toward a more inclusive and sustainable global framework.