Institutional Resilience and Inclusive Educational Technology in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Bangladesh's Higher Education Digital Transformation in South Asian and Global Perspectives

This paper offers a state-of-the-art analysis of digital transformation in Bangladesh's higher education sector, examined within broader South Asian and global contexts. It explores how higher education institutions navigate uncertainty in the age of artificial intelligence (AI) by drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship from education policy, educational technology, human-computer interaction, and resilience studies. Institutional resilience is conceptualized as a multidimensional capacity that combines absorptive responsiveness, adaptive governance, and longer-term transformative potential, grounded in ethical accountability and inclusive, human-centered design principles. The analysis shows that Bangladesh demonstrated strong absorptive resilience through rapid, state-led digital responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, adaptive and transformative capacities remain uneven across the sector. Persistent digital inequalities, limited faculty preparedness for AI-mediated pedagogy, fragmented AI governance, and the weak integration of inclusive design continue to constrain systemic change. Comparative insights highlight shared regional challenges alongside global disparities in AI governance and critical AI literacy. The study contributes to advancing debates on resilient higher education systems in the Global South.