One of the most identifiable aspects of Meta's metaverse and VR will be injecting VR experiences into everyday life, further demonstrating value in such immersive digital environments.

In this regard, education becomes part of how this will happen by providing schools with VR tools to be used both to increase educational capacity and to expose wide audiences to Meta's evolving VR tools. And this week, Meta announced the next stage of its VR education push in the form of a new Meta for Education beta program. In the beta, Meta will work with universities from both the U.S. and the U.K. to test its new educational experiences on Quest ahead of the bigger education push.
 "Meta for Education's primary goal is to help educators prepare people for an increasingly complex world by creating opportunities that foster curiosity and imagination," the company wrote.

"More than a dozen universities, including Imperial College London, University of Glasgow and University of Leeds, will ensure regular touch points with educators who are trialing VR and XR prototypes and programs in their own classrooms and enable us to improve our products ahead of an official launch.". University partners will also receive access to a set of apps and features that bring students closer to otherwise expensive or out of reach educational experiences, during the beta test.

In the long term, the Meta VR units will eventually provide utility to many more institutions, which helps bring more practical, physical experiences to enhance learning.

But that's not all, for Meta also has joined forces with VictoryXR to introduce the first digital "metaversities" in Europe.

"As part of these metaversities, professors and students at the University of Leeds in the UK, the University of the Basque Country in Spain, and the University of Hannover in Germany will be able to explore, socialize, and take live classes from anywhere in an immersive environment mirroring their actual campuses, all remotely," they said.

These schools will also begin to adopt VR technology in some courses. For instance, at the University of the Basque Country, Meta's technology will begin to be used in Physiotherapy and Anatomy training.

This is an ongoing, long-term play for Meta: the company first began a pilot program with 15 U.S. universities for VR in education all the way back in 2023. This year, Meta launched its new training program to assist educators in harnessing VR in the classroom, and the expectation is that, with greater utility, more schools will embrace more VR-based learning experiences, which will only serve to build on that momentum, helping Meta get more juice from its next-level push.
Both VR and AR devices have already found their ways into many professional sectors, with Google's failed consumer product Google Glass finding a new lease of life in industrial applications. But education will bring these technologies to a much broader audience, which will then, ideally, prompt more students to use VR in their everyday life as well, leading into the metaverse shift.

Which is still coming. Meta probably went a bit early on its metaverse-aligned rebrand a couple of years back, but the trends do point to people eventually interacting in increasingly immersive digital environments, as the technology improves, and accessibility becomes more universal.

Now, there aren't many reasons to get a VR headset, but as more applications emerge and more people populate the VR worlds, the value of such experiences will rise.

And the more Meta can raise public awareness about it, the better. And really, there is no better way to get the next generation of consumers onboard than through practical demonstrations in the classroom that they have to experience and participate in.

This play is good and smart by Meta, and it will continue to keep building upon these educational partnerships powering the next stage.