He points to studies where random stock selections have outperformed crack stock investors as evidence that such salaries are unwarranted.

"In an industry where monkeys throwing darts do better than paid professionals, it's not clear that they couldn't get the same performance with a truckload of bananas," Purdy said.

In 1995, the endowment's return of 16.8 percent was more than nine points below the Standard and Poor's 500, a widely recognized benchmark of stock market performance.

However, Meyer said that in 1994, the endowment beat the S&P by more than the nine points it lagged in 1995, and defends HMC's management approach as more stable.

"We cannot take as much risk as in the S&P 500," Meyer said. "We have to have a more diversified portfolio."

Harvard's five-year return rate from 1992 to 1996 is ahead of the S&P, which wasn't true for the previous five years.

"If you assume that Harvard can spend roughly 4.5 percent of its endowment on its operations, Harvard has about $58 million more per year," he said.

He claims that Harvard pays less than half of what it would were it to contract to external managers as most universities do.

The result is money saved on what he calls "back-office, non-productive expenses" such as marketing that private, corporate management firms entail.

But Meyer said these savings come at the cost of political expedience, for as non-profit institutions, HMC and Harvard must report the earnings of their top employees when filing tax returns.

"While it might be politically expedient to use more external management, it would not be less expensive," reads an HMC press release