Four months after an Iran Election Watch investigation, a think tank run by presidential candidate Hassan Rowhani has corrected his official biography, which had claimed Rowhani obtained a Ph.D. from the prestigious University of Glasgow. The think tank has now asked Iran Election Watch to “publish a correction.”

Until recently, Rowhani’s bio on that website claimed he had graduated from the internationally acclaimed University of Glasgow. For years, journalists and scholars who profiled, researched or interviewed Rowhani had noted as a matter of fact that Rowhani held a Ph.D. from that university.

After extensive reporting, Iran Election Watch ran two stories in January noting it found no evidence that Rowhani ever received a degree from the University of Glasgow.

Rowhani is Iran’s former chief nuclear negotiator and currently heads the Tehran-based think tank, the Center for Strategic Research (CSR). He officially registered last week to run in Iran’s 2013 presidential election.

CSR wrote Iran Election Watch on April 14 regarding our website’s January reporting on Rowhani’s academic past. The think tank clarified that the “correct university is GCU (Glasgow Caledonian University) [and] not University of Glasgow, according to Rouhani [Rowhani]’s biography on his personal website and his resume on [the] CSR website.”

After receiving CSR’s request for a correction, Iran Election Watch looked into the matter further. We found that CSR had itself corrected Rowhani’s official biography following our January stories. Despite asking Iran Election Watch for a correction, the think tank had changed Rowhani’s graduate degree granting institution from the “University of Glasgow” to “Glasgow Caledonian University” in April 2013.

Screenshots below from the same page, in Farsi, show the changes with dates:

The University of Glasgow and Glasgow Caledonian University are separate institutions with different levels of international stature. The University of Glasgow is one of oldest universities in the English-speaking world. Glasgow Caledonian University was established in 1993 and has considerably less global standing.

The Guardian ranked 120 British universities earlier this year. The University of Glasgow placed 14th while Glasgow Caledonian University ranked 91st.