Membongkar Narasi World Class University: Sebuah Pembacaan Lyotard atas Universitas Islam di Indonesia

Abstract

The narrative of World Class University (WCU) has become a dominant administrative ideology in global higher education, including within Islamic higher education institutions in Indonesia. While often presented as a neutral benchmark of academic excellence, WCU carries specific epistemic and metaphysical assumptions rooted in modern Western rationality. This study aims to critically examine the WCU narrative as a contemporary grand narrative and to analyze its implications for Islamic universities, particularly PTKIN, using Jean-François Lyotard’s postmodern philosophy. Methodologically, the research employs a philosophical–conceptual approach, drawing on Lyotard’s key concepts incredulity toward metanarratives, language games, performativity of knowledge, and the differend and is reinforced by empirical illustrations from the Indonesian higher education context. The findings reveal that the WCU agenda functions as a modern grand narrative that prioritizes performativity, quantification, and global competitiveness, thereby generating epistemic, spiritual, and social tensions within Islamic universities. These tensions manifest in the marginalization of Islamic and local knowledge traditions, the dominance of Anglo-Western academic standards, and the transformation of universities into competitive knowledge-production machines focused on rankings and institutional image rather than truth and social relevance. The study concludes that Islamic universities should not uncritically pursue “world-class” status as defined by global indices. Instead, they should cultivate worldly relevance an academic orientation grounded in epistemic plurality, social embeddedness, and sensitivity to local narratives thereby reclaiming their distinctive intellectual, cultural, and spiritual roles in a postmodern condition of knowledge.