Education minister resigns over plagiarised thesis

THE education minister has resigned after a university decided to withdraw her doctorate, finding that she plagiarised parts of her thesis.

The move came as an embarrassment for chancellor Angela Merkel’s government months before national elections. Merkel said she had accepted minister Annette Schavan’s resignation “with a very heavy heart”. Dusseldorf’s Heinrich Heine University decided to revoke Schavan’s doctorate following a review of her 1980 thesis.