Meyer himself earned slightly over $2 million in bonuses this year.

HMC manages and invests all of the Harvard's funds. Its top five professionals--also including Phillip Gross earning $8.7 million, Robert Atchinson earning $7.3 million and Frank Dunau earning $5.8 million-- have invested Harvard's money extremely successfully, outside experts have concluded.

In the past five years, the group has added $5.9 billion to Harvard's endowment and surpassed market benchmarks by $2.1 billion.

Their performance helped increase the endowment to $19.2 billion as of June 30, a 32.2 percent annual return and a $12.2 billion increase since the $7 billion endowment of 1995.

"To get that kind of spread over five years in bonds is very impressive," Richard Charlton, president of New England Pension Consultants--a Cambridge firm that tracks investment performance, told The Boston Globe.

Meyer said it is appropriate that HMC managers make more money than other Harvard administrators who work more closely with the school.

"It's an entirely different business," said Meyer. "We are not an academic institution. Our investment managers come in from outside firms and [transfer] out too."