For the next school year, Facebook’s Meta and a French digital training provider will collaborate to develop the “metaverse academy.”
The term “metaverse” refers to an immersive digital environment with the goal of recreating real life via the use of augmented or virtual reality and transitioning the web from a two-dimensional to a three-dimensional format.
Laurent Solly, Meta’s vice president for southern Europe, told AFP that the school’s first year’s objective is to teach roughly 100 students in two roles: specialized immersive technology developers and support and assistance technicians.
Frederic Bardeau, the co-founder and CEO of Simplon, the French company partnering with Meta, said the education approach would be in-person and project-based, with an emphasis on 3D worlds and interactions in virtual realities.
Metaverse Academy will teach 20 students per city each year in Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, and other cities.
The importance of diversity will be emphasized throughout. Bardeau claimed he would not look at candidates’ CVs and endorsed positive discrimination, although Solly said the goal was to have 30% of the first cohort be female.
Meta said in October of last year that it planned to generate 10,000 jobs in Europe over the next five years in order to establish the metaverse, the new strategic goal of the US technology behemoth. The purpose is coupled with forecasts that future employment skills will be strongly linked to the metaverse. According to Meta and Simplon, 80 percent of the occupations that will exist in 2030 have not yet been established, underscoring the need to develop training programs today.
Featured Image Credit: In this illustration photo taken in Los Angeles on Oct. 28, 2021, a person watches on a smartphone Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveil the Meta logo. (Photo by CHRIS DELMAS / Agence France-Presse)