Newly minted Sen. John Walsh is no stranger to academia, having bounced between three repositories of higher learning before securing a Master of Arts from the U.S. Army War College.  

But if one were to believe the incongruous résumés available online, the source of his undergraduate degree is more puzzling than textbook.  

CQ Roll Call’s official biography lists the Montana Democrat as having attended Carroll College (1984); he later graduated from distance learning-friendly Regents College (1990) with a Bachelor of Science.  

Back then, Regents operated within the statewide scholastic network overseen by the overarching University of the State of New York. The school was rebranded as Excelsior College in 2001   — and we have not even gotten to the widespread goofiness yet.  

On his campaign website, Walsh acknowledges the brief stint at Carroll College. He also, rather curiously, lists himself as having attended SUNY — the State University of New York.  

The government-run biographical directory of the United States Congress does Walsh one better, not only placing him at SUNY but also bestowing bragging rights to having snagged his sheepskin in Albany.  

While the five dozen-odd SUNY campuses do fall under the purview of USNY, the two organizational structures are not interchangeable.  

Whether this is all predicated on a single, mistakenly transcribed character or an elaborate plot to rewrite history remains unclear. All we got from Team Walsh was a confirmation (“I double-checked with the Senator, and he did graduate from USNY (not SUNY),” his office relayed via email) of what we already knew.