A college student drops out, develops a new technology or way of doing things, and then earns billions of dollars as a result. In the post-Mark Zuckerberg era, I rarely click on such stories. They seem to be so common that they’re now old hat.

I did click on Brendan Iribe’s story, though. The University of Maryland drop-out’s fascination with virtual reality (VR) led him to create the company Oculus VR, which was purchased by Facebook earlier this year for roughly $2 billion.

In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Iribe explains why he thinks the latest developments in the VR world could be a big part of higher education’s “next step.” But while he’s confident that VR is finally poised, after decades of experimentation and rough starts, to become a practical and useful technology, he’s not willing to say that it will disrupt higher education anytime soon, nor does he believe that it should.

He recently donated $35 million to his former university for the construction of a new computer science building. He says that there are “a lot of great reasons for universities,” such as helping innovators collaborate and develop ideas, and allowing college-aged students to grow personally. “This is the way things work today, so you don’t go out and disrupt and change the whole university system overnight. Even if it’s an online system, these things take time,” he says.

Nevertheless, Iribe says that, eventually, “we can have relationships and communication that are just as good as the real classroom” and that VR is going to be “one of the most transformative platforms for education of all time.”