Yale's Top 3 Investment Officers Earned A Combined $10 Million In 2008-2009

Even though Yale's endowment saw a 33.9 percent decline from 2008 to 2009, its three lead managers collected more than $10 million in salary and benefits, the Yale Daily News reports.

Chief Investment Officer David Swensen and his deputy Dean Takahashi earned $5.3 million and $3.5 million respectively. Both received substantial raises from the previous year.

The Daily News has more:

The Internal Revenue Service form shows that the bulk of Swensen and Takahashi's earnings come from bonuses and incentives, which Yale doles out based on the long-term performance of Yale's endowment. In the fiscal year ending in June 2008, the endowment grew just 4.5 percent. The result was disappointing after performance in previous years, when Yale's endowment regularly jumped more than 20 percent in a single year, but the figure looked good a year later when the endowment fell by 24.6 percent during the fiscal year ending in June 2009.

In March, Hammond Associates Higher Education Group Director Richard Anderson praised Swenson's overall management style: "Swensen took risks and had a lot of real assets, and those returns were terrible," Anderson said. "But the real story is how Yale has done over the long term, and Swensen's done terrifically."

According to the IRS report, University President Richard Levin took home $1.5 million, making him the third-highest paid Yale employee.