Abstract
The ongoing debate over the implementation of generative AI in education highlights the need for deeper reflection on the purposes of education. Using Cory Doctorow’s concept of “enshitification”—which describes the decay of internet platforms as they exploit users—I draw an analogy to education and develop enshitification as a third way worlds come to an end. I claim that the rapid integration of AI into educational settings represents the final stage of education’s enshittening. In such a demise, the focus shifts from meaningful world-building to mere outcomes and self-perpetuation, revealing the abandonment of education's world-building purpose. In this scenario, enshittened education becomes a self-cannibalizing system devoid of purpose, meaning, and world-building. Turning toward a constructive conclusion, I consider Doctorow’s four constraints—competition, regulation, self-help, and labour—for preventing enshitification as necessary conditions for the continuation of education and our worlds. With this, I argue that the purpose of education is worlds: their construction and their maintenance; yet I question whether we still value education enough to preserve it and whether we love our worlds enough to prevent their demise.