Mark Chelgren

Shown in this Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2017, file photo is State Sen. Mark Chelgren, R-Ottumwa, at the Statehouse in Des Moines, Iowa.

(The Associated Press)

An Iowa lawmaker is under fire for claiming he got a business degree from a company that operated Sizzler restaurants.

The official bio for State Sen. Mark Chelgren (R-Ottumwa) previously claimed he obtained a "degree in hotel restaurant management" from the Forbco Management School near Los Angeles in the 1980s. Ed Failor, a spokesman for the Iowa State Republicans, told NBC News that it's actually a company that operated the popular steakhouse chain in southern California.

"This was a management course he took when he worked for Sizzler, kind of like Hamburger University at McDonald's," Failor said. "He got a certificate."

Chelgren, who has represented parts of southeastern Iowa since 2011, did not receive a degree from Forbco.

According to the New York Daily News, the reference has been removed from a government website listing Chelgren's credentials. Chelgren says he studied "astro-physics, geo-physics and mathematics" at the University of California at Riverside, but did not graduate, a UC spokesman said. He did, however, get a degree from Riverside Community College in California.

Chelgren told NBC he was not trying to "inflate" his educational experience. According to the Des Moines Register, he added that "degree" was the term Forbco used for completing the six-month course to be promoted from associate manager to assistant manager.

So why all the fuss?

Chelgren introduced a bill in the Iowa Senate last month that aims to freeze hiring at state schools unless there are closer to an even number of registered Republican and Democrat professors. Senate File 288 would require the number of faculty members from each political party to be within 10 percent of each other at Board of Regents universities.

Chelgren reportedly claimed his own experience with "liberal professors" inspired the proposed law.

"We have an awful lot of taxpayer dollars that go to support these fine universities," he told the Register. "(Students) should be able to go to their professors, ask opinions, and they should know publicly whether that professor is a Republican or Democrat or no-party affiliation, and therefore they can expect their answers to be given in as honest a way possible. But they should have the ability to ask questions of professors of different political ideologies."