You’ve Been Admitted to the Metaversity
How virtually immersive universities like Invact will create a sea change in education, work and culture
Today’s Innovation Armory is on a new type of emerging educational institution: The Metaversity. Metaversities are immersive (VR-enabled) digital space-based learning environments where diverse groups of global students can learn, collaborate, socialize and credentialize together. In today’s piece, I deep dive into:
Why metaversities thread the needle on community, price / value and educational engagement vs. traditional university or MOOC education
How metaversities will revolutionize the full student journey - from admission through recruiting for a job post-graduation
How web3 will intersect with culture-building on metaversity college campuses: NFT merchandise, campus real estate and mascot world-building / IP
Why the virtual college campus will become the de facto B2BC distribution engine for game publishers and why we will see an “NCAA of the Metaversity” emerge for eSports
Universities as DAOs and community-governed admissions processes
How academic performance and community involvement will converge to Proof of Achievement, becoming the underlying non-fungible professional recruiting standard
The advantage the metaversity has in more efficiently productizing its educational offerings by tailoring virtual learning spaces with subject matter and student learning style
How at scale, the metaversity ecosystem might just turn higher education into one massive play-to-earn game
Thank you very much to Manish Maheshwari (CEO & Founder) of Invact Metaversity for our discussion and for sharing your perspective for this piece!
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There is a new type of educational institution / platform that I expect to take the academic world by storm over the coming decade. It sits squarely between traditional universities and MOOCs (massive open online courses) and remote learning. Traditional remote learning options (Zoom, passive coursework) are not very engaging and are overpriced. The pandemic highlighted the absurdity of paying brandname university prices for a subpar remote learning experience with minimal collaboration, engagement and socialization vs. a traditional university education. This is highlighted by higher university deferrals (e.g. Freshman enrollments declined 13% in the fall of 2020). There was a pretty famous meme circulating during this time that really rang true for me comparing the cost of a Harvard degree to media streaming prices:
The level of collaboration in Zoom / traditional video based remote learning is understandably much lower especially when trying to get un-affiliated / new groups of students to learn and socialize together online. In traditional remote learning options, remote socialization tied with academia has really struggled to keep pace. For God’s sake, most people don’t even have their cameras on in remote learning environments!
Part of the issue is that while many tier 1 schools acknowledge there is quality differential in remote vs. in-person options, they are hesitant to reduce pricing / tuition on remote learning because of the potential brand dilution they could suffer to their core academic brand. Outside of university remote learning, MOOCs have nearly zero socialization and collaboration element and suffer from low completion rates (20% at the exceptionally high end of the range when sponsored by top tier institutions, but can be as low as a couple percentage points). MOOCs that don’t market themselves as actual universities also lack credentialization which contribute to lower completion rates. In Future Proofing Digital Education, I wrote about how job-focused digital learning was a possible solution here. This is only part of the solution though: we also need a community and collaboration revolution in digitally immersive learning.
While traditional university campus experiences rank high in terms of socialization and collaboration, relative to online learning, they are:
Overpriced and inaccessible to most of the world - the overpriced piece is only not necessarily true at tier 1 institutions where the ROI on your degree is high, but is certainly becoming more of the case for tier 2-4 private universities especially as tuition rates skyrocketed through 2020. Interestingly, we actually saw tuition net of aid decline for the bulk of the tier 2-4 universities for the first time in decades last year. I believe a big portion of this shift we are seeing is younger students who have grown up around free educational tools and don’t see value in attending a low ROI tier 2-4 university especially when the experience is online and they don’t gain community benefit
They are not incentivized to be tech-enabled in some of the really interesting ways online education can theoretically administer education more effectively: i) stratifying student cohorts based on data, ii) more engaging creator-driven course curriculum, iii) incorporating student feedback real-time, etc. More on some of these points later
The vacuum created by declining tier 2-4 private universities and rising demand / low quality supply of remote learning options has created a massive opportunity.
Enter the Metaversity, which combines the best-in-class technology and pricing value of online learning with the collaboration, community, socialization (and fun!) of the traditional college campus. Metaversities are immersive digital space-based immersive learning environments where diverse groups of global students can learn, collaborate, socialize and credentialize together. Invact Metaversity, an India-based education startup is the first-mover in creating a metaversity and the leading player in the space.
Metaversities combine the best attributes from existing models to thread the needle between community, pricing and educational quality. Starting with a virtual MBA program (MetaMBA), Invact is accelerating remote learning models by creating fully immersive, virtual reality-enabled university campuses in the metaverse. In the classroom, this takes collaboration to a whole new level where students can actually sit face-to-face and have breakout / discussion sessions with one another or can screenshare a project or content into the virtual world to present to fellow students. Outside the classroom, there will be a thriving cultural community built around the virtual university (spaces for socializing, sporting events, etc.)
I caught up with Manish Maheshwari, CEO & Founder of Invact Metaversity to learn more about his vision for the metaversity and why it will be superior to both the traditional university and MOOCs: "Quality education is an unsolved problem for billions. Physical infrastructure-based colleges cannot scale to meet the demand. Current online solutions do poorly on community and credentialing. Metaversity can solve these problems for billions of people around the world."
The Metaversity Will 10x Every Part of the Student Academic Journey
There are plentiful ways that a truly immersive and virtual university could meaningfully improve the quality of education. The reason that MOOCs have not been able to dramatically improve educational personalization is because they are often only used to augment a particular skill or to learn one subject rather than following a student across their entire student journey. This is why it is particularly important to combine the low cost distribution and technology of MOOC education with an actual place-based (in the metaverse) university program.
The traditional university admissions process is incredibly arbitrary and unfair: legacy and donations play a disproportionate role in admissions outcomes, too much emphasis is given on standardized testing that doesn’t necessarily determine professional success and a committee of disconnected administrators determine the future of way too many kids. On this latter point, see below live discussions from a real admissions committee:
What if instead of an arbitrary admissions committee deciding student admissions, community members, professors and alumni (the relevant stakeholders that actually care about who joins their community / who they interact with) can take voting actions on who is admitted (of course, with some checks / constraints to check bias). Obviously, evaluating applications can be time-intensive, but i) the actual application process can be streamlined to a more digitally native / efficient format (e.g. TikTok videos partially screened with AI) and ii) community members can be incentivized with a campus token / derivative cryptocurrency to participate in deliberations. Especially on the community front, relevant stakeholders at campus groups in which that student may be involved should be participants in the decision as to whether they join their community. Because all of these interactions can be digitally recorded, the metaversity can actually close the data loop on good admissions decisions. We can actually track the academic performance, community involvement and professional placements of students voted on by particular community members and alumni and give more preference to / incentivize them more to participate in the future with more tokens to improve the admissions process.
The metaversity also has the admissions advantage of being able to create more bespoke testing that is actually tailored to students’ academic interests. If a student knows they only want to do liberal arts, they can structure testing algorithms to serve more questions and give more scoring credit to questions around political science that test critical thinking vs. algebra questions that may have no bearing on a student’s academic and professional outcomes. More saliently, this ties into the way students are actually placed on campuses.
Given low marginal distribution cost vs. traditional university education, metaversities have the advantage of not only being able to create nearly infinite academic products (MOOCs also partially have this advantage) but then also tailoring campus design, workspaces and classroom environments specifically to the subject and community preferences of that product. When students apply and take admissions exams, metaversities don’t have to make a generic admissions decision, but they can be more granular and make an admissions decision into a very specific campus. At scale, once enough students are in the overall umbrella network, it could make sense to have very granular campuses around subjects like Middle Eastern Politics, Racial Politics or NFT Investing.
By the way, given all of these campuses sit in the same parent ecosystem, once virtual reality proliferates further and more students access the metaversity through a VR headset, there will be really interesting opportunities to upcharge for “study abroad experiences” at other virtual campuses within the same metaversity umbrella.
Once students actually begin taking course curriculum, there is a really interesting opportunity to use data and AI to optimize for academic concentration and preference selection. Of course, in a world where this is part of the admissions process in terms of campus bifurcation, the scope of concentration breadth will be more limited once actually in a program. Metaversities will be able to track your i) own individual performance, live reactions to in-class lectures, your course selection and pair that with ii) expectations around lifestyle, salary expectations and iii) compare to prior school cohort performance to help students identify their optimal speciality and bundles of coursework. Combining external cohort data with personal preferences will allow students to graduate with a more optimal set of coursework that best meets their professional interests and lifestyle requirements.
The traditional university experience is notoriously horrible when it comes to overall professional and academic journey mentoring. You meet with a different advisor once a year to not really talk about a whole lot. This data tracking serves almost as a continuous automated form of advising and could be supplemented again by crypto / token initiatives to incentivize alumni and senior community members to also help younger students navigate the outputs of their journey recommendations. Helping each student actually maximize their own personal, time and dollar ROI is what will drive a virtuous cycle of more applications to metaversities.
Traditional and remote learning options today struggle existentially along the engagement / completion spectrum. Older, tenured professors are not as engaging as Youtube content creators, TikTok, etc., but students complete the classes because of the credentialization it affords. MOOCs struggle from low completion rates because they aren’t very tailored to individuals’ learning styles. Metaversities can be both engaging and highly tailored by employing the use of creators and intelligently designing campus environments and classes to cater to different types of learning styles.
The creator involvement piece is interesting because while creators may start by creating their own classes for metaversities, there may also be an opportunity to white label metaversity management software to help creators launch their own digital universities eventually that meld learning and community around a particular prominent creator that is heralded in a specific skill set. Kind of like Trump University except actually enriching to students and not fraudulent:
Instead of splitting classes and teacher / student pairings by learning style, the level of placement could also occur at the campus level at admissions, similar to the professional and academic interest bifurcation discussed earlier. As metaversities will be incredibly diverse (as they aren’t constrained by geography), they can also increase completion and engagement rates by building in translation and foreign language tools to allow non-native language speakers to understand and comprehend lectures better in real-time.
In terms of employability, metaversities also have a strong theoretical competitive advantage. Of course, some of the creator-specific coursework can have more useful technical subject matter that makes students more employable. Corporate sponsors can also more seamlessly and efficiently sponsor courses or groups on campus that increase professional connectivity with the metaversity community. Remember though that much of the employability issue with historical digital education has been lack of credentialization. Metaversities can record proof of work and achievement on the blockchain to track professional, academic and community identity.
It’s more like Proof of Achievement. Your credentials (performance, network, tested technical skills, community affiliations) can be recorded in a non-fungible format all recorded based on your micro-interactions and outcomes in the metaversity ecosystem. Relative to a resume (all self reported and filled with puffery and Linkedin (mostly self report with some fungible references), metaversity professional identity tracking has the potential to become more credentializing once the metaversity brand is reputable at scale.
It makes so much sense that a credentializing network would be owned by educational providers that actually have the data inputs and can serve as the single source of truth to validate professional signaling. Traditional universities have not done this because each is too regional / small and technology is not their core competency. At scale, if a player like Invact Metaversity offers many bespoke and distinct product campuses and also white labels its platform to traditional universities, you could see it building a credentialing network on the backs of that data layer that rivals LinkedIn in terms of signaling value and magnitude of network effects.
Giving Superpowers to Non-Tier 1 Universities
While there is most obviously a B2C business model of signing up students for a metaversity, there is also an increasingly large opportunity to help non-tier 1 universities that are becoming less competitive with tier 1 universities to grow their brands. Increasingly a greater percentage of private universities outside of tier 1 are struggling:
Because of lower enrollment rates, they are waiving standardized testing policies - while some might view this as positive, it probably isn’t great from a brand perspective to have fewer entrance requirements even if the standardized testing system as it exists today needs improvements
Faculty layoffs at non-tier 1 institutions are at highs - this creates a viscous cycle where the actual educational and community quality begin to fall precipitously once these sorts of cuts need to be made
Lower quality institutions are experiencing increasing bankruptcies and university closures
Meanwhile, tier 1 universities in the US are flush with cash and seeing unprecedented interest from students. One of the most meaningful opportunities for the metaversity is giving existing non-elite universities the opportunity to compete with tier 1 on i) lower pricing, ii) greater marketability to international student communities, iii) more engaging and technology-native educational interface.
Tier 2-4 universities can either white label metaversity infrastructure software to construct their own college campuses or work with faculty and existing curricula coordinators to sponsor classes in existing metaversities to generate new high margin income streams.
I think most universities will start by sponsoring classes (similar to how Harvard, Stanford, etc. have launched some free MOOCs), but then increasingly schools in tier 2-4 will see how much more profitable their metaversity income stream is vs. their university income stream and will want to launch their own virtual campuses. Interestingly, while I don’t think tier 1 universities will feel much of a need to explore this model (why would they right now with their brands and their massive cash endowments?), I do think the ability to productize academics in a more granular way with metaversities will create a system long-term where even tier 1 brands will want to launch non-dilutive brands to compete in tier 2-4 as those less elite universities increasingly try to encroach on tier 1 market share with better price / value and technology. However, it is important to note, I don’t think that metaversities offer a viable alternative in their current state to the research activities and functions of traditional tier 1 universities.
I think we will see a branding strategy similar to what we have seen with car OEMs where holding companies manufacture and own very distinct sets of brands that the average customer doesn’t really even know are affiliated.
Hyper-Scaling (College) Culture
So far, we have talked all about the academic and professional implications of metaversities. Now let’s get to the fun stuff! Unlike MOOCs, metaversities are places to gather, socialize, collaborate and build culture. Metaversities are going to be spaces where lots of the same cultural activities you see on college campuses also occur. A couple of really obvious cultural areas that come to mind include:
Sports teams and associated metaversity / college mascots
School spirit merchandise (likely in the form of NFTs, skins and collectibles)
Performing arts and spaces for singing, dancing and acting
Small businesses and activities around the virtual campus like museums and NFT shops
I have a feeling the fraternities at metaversities aren’t going to be in greek letters but will be in binary code (insert quadruple sarcasm emoji):
In all seriousness, there is a massive opportunity for media businesses, gaming companies, and culture IP builders to capitalize on the impending gold rush within metaversities: I believe metaversities will become one of the the premier B2BC distribution channels for new age media like NFTs, play-to-earn games, eSports teams and virtual celebrities / synthetic avatars.
Hot new consumer trends spread like wildfire on college campuses where students socialize regularly and are densely clustered in physical spaces. Metaversity trend acceleration will be even faster because it will happen at the lightspeed of the internet, with the benefits of college-based community clustering, but on a more global and diverse scale. That is why a lot of the top consumer technology businesses (especially in social) have taken a very campus-centric marketing approach, often hiring campus representatives to accelerate adoption. Media and consumer technology businesses should begin thinking about creative ways to partner with and acquire assets in these metaversity ecosystems to leverage them as B2BC nodes to spread their products and IP.
For example, for scarce digital apparel makers like RTFKT, I would consider forming partnerships to be the designer of merchandise at as many metaversity official campus stores as possible. For those offline brands that have been late to the game on web3, penetrating emerging metaversities early will be a really good way to catch up since it changes the game in terms of what will be most effective in reaching Gen Alpha and beyond (Gen Z will probably age out by the time metaversities are scaled).
Up and coming singers and artists should try to sponsor performing arts / music clubs on campus and maybe even invest in / acquire the rights to performing arts venues on the digital campuses of metaversities.
In terms of sports teams, it makes the most sense that metaversity leagues will consist of eSports and we will likely see an “NCAA of metaversities” emerge. In the same way students want to play in varsity and intramural sports in college, we will certainly see a similar hierarchy emerge. The question is which games will be the most popular across metaversities?
In my opinion, this creates one of the largest culture / IP building opportunities within the metaversity ecosystem: as a gaming studio, taking an active approach of partnering with emerging metaversities and seeding metaversity sports teams to build cross-campus leagues. If I started a new game studio today, I would make these early partnerships a core part of my strategy and it’s the kind of early bridge-building that could really add fuel to the fire on a new game. Penetrating the digital university ecosystem will help catapult new gaming studios ahead of their counterparts by quickly building audience in a digitally native way (similar to what Overtime has done in basketball which I wrote about here), but also building out a pipeline of avid players who will want to continue playing once they graduate school. Plus, almost all the big time sports leagues have a college counterpart and building a name in metaversity eSports could be a creative means of creating a bigger splash outside the digital college campus.
Further, over the past couple of years, speculators have rushed to buy digital land in virtual worlds like Decentraland as investment properties. My biggest issue with these metaverse real estate investments is that often there is not enough cultural and community activity happening around where plots of virtual land are bought to justify the prices that folks are paying. If I were interested in acquiring metaverse land, I would start with the land, shop plots and real estate around metaversity campuses. The intellectual activity, rich student communities, alumni backing and culture-building that will occur on these campuses will make these virtual land plays one of the best early opportunities in acquiring metaverse land. The appreciation of this land will be driven by compounding human capital, cultural attention and educational engagement all around a stable and lasting academic institution.
Metaversity DAOs and Learn to Earn
We’ve already discussed tier 2-4 existing universities launching their own metaversities as well as creators. As the white labeling infrastructure for launching your own metaversity becomes even more scalable, I believe we will see some universities even emerge as DAOs that are operated as cooperatives. The folks in the metaversity ecosystem that create the most value (lecturers, highly involved alumni, athletes, student leaders) will be token holders who are both economically incentivized to maintain and communally vote on metaversity governance initiatives. At the end of the day what is the purpose of a university degree? In my opinion, it follows this rank order:
Number 1 is definitely a means to get a job
Number 2 is tied at community / socialization / network building and intellectual development
If the DAO of community members consists of active and successful alumni in a relevant field, they can probably better coordinate with lecturers / content creators in the DAO to vote on skill building initiatives better than a bunch of middle-aged administrators can. Students and lecturers are best equipped to determine policies around #2 with the help of technology to facilitate more meaningful professional and personal growth. Traditional universities have a whole apparatus of social policing and overly rigid academic structure respectively built around the components of #2. Without the traditional safety concerns of a physical university campus or the cost constraints of offline curriculum planning, if the yardstick is about what will make students happiest and help them grow the most, students working with other students, mentors and subject matter experts can judge this better than a layer of university middlemen.
At scale, the whole rise of the metaversity and the ecosystem built around it turns the learning and professional recruiting processes into one giant play-to-earn game hosted in virtual reality. Students will be cooperating and competing against one another to level up their own proof of work and take the fruits of being at the top of the academic leaderboard to get hired. Especially in the event that these virtual universities become at least partially community owned, students will also simultaneously earn cash while they learn, effectively getting value back in the form of tuition credits as they actively engage with the academic community, distributed from the profits of sporting events, recruiting fairs, corporate sponsorships, etc. More saliently, while you can earn yield on financial capital by buying assets in play-to-earn games, you earn yield on your human capital in play-to-earn education.
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