PROFESSOR MONEYBAGS
A £350k salary. Rent-free flat. Lavish perks and costly foreign jaunts. The boss of a FTSE 100 firm? No, these are the rewards for running a university ranked 67th in Britain – and an object lesson in why such institutions are on the brink of bankruptcy
THERE are blatant self-publicists and then — somewhere in the stratosphere, way above the level of the average narcissist — there is Dominic Marcus Shellard.
The recently departed vice- chancellor of De Montfort University (DMU) in Leicester was never a man to miss a selfpublicising photo-opportunity, self-promoting YouTube appearance, self-congratulatory Tweet or indeed a selfie of any kind. He was once witnessed roaming the campus, selfie stick in hand. A flick through some of the university’s annual accounts tells its own story. There, amid all those boring figures, you will find full-page portraits of Britain’s youngest vice-chancellor staring up to heaven wearing a radiant smile. The only thing missing is a halo.
But now Shellard, 53, is facing allegations that his career at De Montfort has been far from saintly. His sudden resignation earlier this year brought forth allegations concerning the use of university funds — public money derived mostly from student tuition fees — to finance a privileged lifestyle involving copious foreign travel and entertaining.
Added to this are accusations of bullying of staff and favouritism in the appointment of subordinates.
The Office For Students, the new regulator for higher education, is carrying out an investigation into ‘ governance and regulatory matters’ that will be a test of its commitment to uncover abuses in the university system — particularly the grotesque ‘fat cat’ salaries paid to some vice-chancellors.
Just last month the Government warned universities that they can no longer expect to be bailed out if they overspend. Data released this month showed that 32 out of 134 English universities posted a deficit in 2017-18, up from 24 the year before.
Now, questions are being asked about how De Montfort, previously Leicester Polytechnic and hardly one of Britain’s richest educational institutions, allowed Shellard to conduct himself so extravagantly during his eight-year term, repeatedly rewarding him with big bonuses and salary increases.
In the last full financial year, Shellard was awarded the biggest pay-rise of any head of a British university — one ranked 67th in the 2020 Complete University Guide.
The £64,000 increase boosted his annual pay packet to £350,000, more than twice the salary of the Prime Minister.
Rarely have the fusty, dusty corridors of British academia been adorned by so flamboyant a character as Professor Shellard. How many vice-chancellors, after all, have led a mass flash mob while lip-syncing to Bonnie Tyler’s 1984 hit Holding Out For A Hero? CLICK on YouTube, and there is our Dominic, strutting his stuff, highfiving an admiring crowd and trying only half successfully to jump in the air. This was a charity event that raised some £5,000 — but cost De Montfort £22,000.
Such a loss was mere chicken feed, however, compared with spending on foreign travel and entertaining as Shellard roamed the world to sell his university.
University figures show that in 2016-2017 alone, Shellard spent £57,000 on business travel, including £37,790 on flights. According to DMU, the vice- chancellor flew economy or business, depending on the airline and destination. He also spent £15,422 on hotels and £4,160 on rail fares.
That year — as Shellard’s business credit card bills show — saw lunches and dinners as far afield as New York, New Orleans, Seville, Stockholm and Shanghai. There were perks, too. And what perks! De Montfort provided him with a rent- free, two- floor flat in a Georgian house on campus. A car and driver were also made available on occasion. Shellard shared the flat with his husband John Walker, 47, who was recently appointed lecturer on a new diagnostic radiography course at DMU.
That was not all. For reasons unclear, this small university also paid almost £2,700 for Shellard’s access to the exclusive private members’ club above The Ivy restaurant in London’s Covent Garden. Why this was considered necessary, the university refuses to explain.
All this from an institution that is legally a charity, not an international corporation.
Shellard, a former Labour councillor during his time as an academic at Sheffield University, stood as a Labour candidate in the 1998 European elections. But his rule at DMU appears to have been anything but democratic.
‘Here, we had the head of an expolytechnic behaving like a monarch,’ says a senior serving member of the De Montfort staff. Now, all that is gone. In mid-February, following a vote of no confidence by the executive board of DMU, the vice-chancellor disappeared from his post.
His residence on campus was cleared of furniture, the two VW Golfs usually parked outside disappeared, and his normally frenetic Twitter account fell silent. Rumours about Shellard’s sudden demise were soon swirling around the DMU campus, sited in Leicester’s city centre.
Within days, the dam burst. A tsunami of long-held grievances flowed out from staff and students who had experienced the dark side of Dominic Shellard. College unions weighed in by passing a motion of no confidence in DMU’s management, citing a culture of ‘extravagance, lies and bullying’.
Tales of Shellard’s losses of temper behind closed doors surfaced.
‘The guy was a bully,’ a serving senior member of staff tells the Mail. ‘Before meetings, you were told not to ask him questions, and if you did your card was marked.’
When the student newspaper criticised a visit by the Queen, Shellard ordered the destruction of all copies. ‘He was red in the face, veins bulging out, literally screaming,’ recalls one of those summoned to a meeting. ‘He said we were to remove and destroy every single copy with immediate effect. I objected and the screaming continued. He said if every copy was not removed from stands by the end of the day, he would see to it that all funding from the university to the student union was removed.’
The papers were collected and duly destroyed. AN ARDENT social-climber, Shellard sought to ingratiate himself with David Cameron in 2015 by making the then PM a ‘Companion of the University’ for legalising same-sex marriage.
Later that year, Shellard faced embarrassment when a letter was leaked showing how his minions at DMU were lobbying for him to be granted an honour.
The academics’ union, the UCU, called for an independent inquiry into the ‘ culture of fear, bullying and harassment’ at DMU. It claims the ‘toxic’ atmosphere caused ‘trauma’ to members of staff.
But it was financial dealings that appear to have caused his downfall.The Mail understands that Shellard’s departure followed a forensic audit by the university’s internal auditors, PwC. Launched last autumn, this is thought to have focused, at least in part, on expenses. Full details will not be known until the conclusion of the Office For Students inquiry, a test of its teeth as a regulatory body.
Shellard’s fall from grace is a chastening example of how Britain’s university sector is being called to account.
Vast salaries are now the norm for vice-chancellors who insist on styling themselves in the manner of corporate chief executives, while students face years of debt after taking out loans to pay fees.
Shellard’s pay and pension contributions at DMU at the beginning of his tenure in 2010 totalled £237,000. It climbed substantially in 2013-14 with a £45,000 bonus, and more bonuses followed until a permanent increase in salary to £350,000 was declared in the 201718 financial year, at which point the bonuses ceased.
Justifying last year’s huge £64,000 hike in his pay, DMU cited his ‘ strong presence and growing impact on the sector’.
The accounts point out that Shellard managed to pay for his own gas and electricity at his rentfree pad — how good of him.
Shellard is a product of independent Dulwich College in London and St Peter’s College, Oxford, where he read English and German. An authority on post-war British theatre, his taste for the theatrical certainly manifested itself.
Be it a visit by the Queen and Duchess of Cambridge in 2012 or that flash mob the same year, he was always centre-stage.
A football nut, he is a QPR season ticket holder and member of the FA council. The soccer-mad don even boasted his own football team — DMUVC FC. Drawn from university and guest players, it was separate from established DMU soccer teams. Victory on the field would be rewarded with barbecues at the vice- chancellor’s lodge or dinner at Leicester’s better restaurants.
Shellard’s globe - trotting — often accompanied by acolytes in the university administration — was impressive.
One reason given for the expeditions — to China, India, Japan, Brazil, Russia and the U.S. to name but a
few — was the recruitment of foreign students, the cash cows of the modern British university system. Co-operation agreements with foreign institutions and sponsors provided more opportunities to see the world. Then there is DMU Global, which organised trips abroad for students and staff, intended to foster greater understanding of the world. These could be costly affairs — shellard once took some 1,000 students to visit the UN in New York. All this was organised by a bloated department called strategic And international Partnerships, headed by a young man called James Gardner. When critics of shellard talk about his cultivation of a favoured clique of young administrators, they mean Gardner. A graduate of Leicester University with a single BA (hons) degree, this man in his late 20s has reached the rank of pro-vice-chancellor at DMU. in comparison to the university’s other pro-vice-chancellors his single degree looks — well — paltry.
Yet FOi requests reveal Gardner was paid between £ 170,000 and £180,000 by DMU — again more than the Prime Minister earns, and not bad for someone who joined De Montfort in 2011 after a brief stint as a graduate intern at his old university.
shellard and Gardner sometimes travelled abroad together and the latter’s power is said to have stemmed from his status as a confidant of the vice-chancellor. Gardner has refused to respond to questions.
The Mail has repeatedly attempted to contact shellard’s sister, sonya, with no response. University accounts show that in 2017-18 a Cheshire-based training company called Vector received £67,800 in fees from De Montfort. Ms shellard is a director of and majority shareholder in Vector.
The university’s detailed guidelines on conduct warn against not only actual conflicts of interests but relationships which give rise even to the appearance of such conflict.
Over-mighty and greedy university heads like shellard are helped in their quest for riches by supine governing bodies. One governor at DMU was Tony stockdale, a chartered accountant, who joined the governing board in 2007. From 2011 he was a member of the board’s remuneration committee, sometimes just three members strong, which set shellard’s pay.
According to Companies house, stockdale is involved with scores of ventures, one of which is a legal firm called Metamorph Law. in DMU’s register of interests for the academic session 2017-2018, shellard makes no mention of his involvement with Metamorph, despite having taken a shareholding in March 2017.
Yet, in that same session’s register of interests he mentions his unremunerated role with the FA Council, which began six months later in september 2017. indeed, shellard waits until the 2018-2019 session register of interests before mentioning Metamorph. Why the delay?
in turn, stockdale failed to mention his business connection with the vicechancellor. his entry in the same 201819 register states simply: ‘No interests to register.’
stockdale has failed to respond to repeated approaches by the Mail. The university refuses to say why he stepped down suddenly after 11 years on the board. it is understood that some of the departed governors became increasingly concerned by events as shellard’s tenure progressed.
Another governor who has resigned is sir ian Blatchford, director of London’s science Museum, who joined the DMU board in 2010 and was its chairman between 2011 and last year. he has refused to comment on his departure in November.
Between 2011 and 2018, sir ian was also a member of the remuneration committee, and indeed between 2014 and 2016 was its chair.
Between 2010 and 2012, no governor of DMU received any income beyond expenses. But from 2013, some governors began receiving payment for consultancy work, and from 2014 payment for chairing some committees.
As head of the finance committee, stockdale was one who benefited. he was also paid for consultancy work. Answers obtained under FOi show that in 2015 he was paid £25,000 for his role as ‘special adviser’ to shellard and the board on subjects including international partnerships. There was no tendering process for this work.
The excuse for this was that stockdale possessed ‘particular expertise and specialisms’.
Minutes of the DMU governors’ meetings, which take place about every two months, could help clarify matters. But DMU refuses to release them before the end of the academic year. STUDENTs now want answers about how their fees have been spent. Yet, interim vice-chancellor Andy Collop refuses to discuss shellard, telling a student meeting he left to ‘ pursue other interests’. so much for DMU’s promises of ‘transparency’.
in a round-robin letter to university staff, Professor Collop — who as deputy vice- chancellor was shellard’s lieutenant — said he had consulted staff about the regime at DMU. ‘it was difficult and uncomfortable for me to hear some of the strongly expressed views, particularly those around the prevailing culture,’ he wrote.
Announcing the end of shellard’s grace-and-favour flat on campus, housed in a Georgian building previously used for other purposes and converted into a home at a cost of £ 135,000, Collop wrote: ‘We have opened up the Georgian Rooms for wider university use. As i live with my family off campus, i have no plans to use the flat above the Georgian Rooms, so we’ll be making this space available for wider university use.
‘i have also cancelled our membership of the ivy Club in London with immediate effect.’
The Office For students is keeping tight-lipped about its investigation.
Meanwhile, it is believed shellard may be seeking another senior university position, at home or abroad.
Those who have suffered do not mourn his passing. A member of staff once insulted by him about her appearance before being dismissed and paid off, tells the Mail: ‘ When i heard about it, i just thought “karma” — as you sow, so shall you reap.’