<![CDATA[The transformation of contemporary higher education demonstrates the increasing dominance of neoliberal rationality in the governance of modern universities. Higher education is no longer primarily understood as a space for the development of human consciousness and intellectual reflection, but rather as a mechanism for producing economic competencies oriented toward the labor market. This study aims to analyze how neoliberalism shapes the orientation of modern universities, its implications for the meaning of knowledge and student subjectivity, and how Islamic Education can function as an epistemological critique of such rationality. This research employs a qualitative library research approach with a philosophical-critical orientation. Data were analyzed through a critical reading of literature on the neoliberalization of higher education and the intellectual tradition of Islamic education. The findings reveal that the neoliberalization of higher education has reduced knowledge into an instrument of economic utility and shaped students as human capital living within a culture of performativity and self-optimization. In such conditions, Islamic Education (Pendidikan Agama Islam/PAI) tends to experience the marginalization of its transformational function and risks being reduced to an administrative moral mechanism within the neoliberal university. This study argues that Islamic Education should be repositioned not merely as an ethical complement, but as an epistemological critique of the dehumanization of modern education through the strengthening of adab, ethical reflection, and the humanization of knowledge.]]>
