The last 12 months may be a year that will live in infamy for fans of the metaverse. Meta himself, the artist formerly known as Facebook, spent $10 billion building his grand vision of a digital world and allocated $150 million to immersive learning projects, including funding for universities to create digital versions of their campuses that students students can access using Meta VR. headphones of course.

But taking money from Meta to build campus-specific metaverses is just the latest in higher education’s great tradition of letting others benefit from its inventions. The internet itself was developed on college campuses, with Facebook beginning as a platform for Harvard University students to enter personal information before becoming a behemoth that dominates the country’s politics…