Following 10 years as The New School president in New York City and his failed Nebraska bid to return to the U.S. Senate, Bob Kerrey is going back to higher education.

Kerrey has taken a job as executive chairman of a startup in higher education, The Minerva Project. The for-profit university bills itself as more rigorous than Ivy League schools, with the ability to admit vastly more students for about half the cost of an Ivy League education. The school plans to begin classes in 2015.

Kerrey, a former Nebraska governor and two-term U.S. senator, says his new job will be based in San Francisco but will be part-time.