Will the Next Classroom Disruption Be in 3-D? Facebook’s Virtual-Reality Company Thinks So.

College Park, MD — Brendan Iribe dropped out of the University of Maryland, but before he did he amassed 227 parking tickets. And he managed to meet two business partners who would help him build the virtual-reality company Oculus VR, which Facebook bought this year for about $2-billion.

One of those parking tickets remains unpaid, but the university will likely forgive him after Friday, when he gave $31-million to erect a computer-sci...