Picture this, instead of leaving your house to work (or go to school) you put on your headset and enter your work/school environment immediately. This solves the problems of travelling (time wasted, environmental impact, etc.) as well as being physically isolated. Most of this type of activity is performed sitting down so VR is a good fit.
It's not even particularity expensive or technologically difficult, especially if you work in an office job. Instead of requiring a large, expensive monitor (or multiple monitors) you can use a VR rig to have as many monitors as you wish. I can imagine being very productive in such a world. I'm already doing all of my inter-personal contact using video conferencing and VR would only make that better; I love the idea of not having to worry what my hair looks like or trying to remember not to pick my nose while I'm on camera.
I think education would see major benefits of VR, especially as you have to isolate everyone anyway. My wife is an educator and next year's teaching environment is radically different than previous years. The current plans include having kids staying in one classroom all day, reducing free time, no large groups for anything (field day, pep rally, etc.) However, if you embrace VR you can take the whole class on a field trip to every museum on Earth, dig deep into science (this Magic School Bus), or even meet with kids from other countries. This is all (relatively) cheap and easy to do.
This all said, there are definitely opportunities to make VR better and cheaper. Right now, it can be expensive on the individual level to get a good set up, but if you factor in office space costs the price looks more reasonable. Add in advances in light projection and head tracking hardware I think the price begins to plummet and the quality gets better and better.