It’s an awkward way of putting it, to be sure, but this Harvard professor, representing a group of alumni calling for the refund of this year’s money managers’ bonuses — they earned $21 million for losing $8 billion of Harvard’s endowment — is certainly correct.

The bonuses – paid out over time and subject to so-called clawback provisions if future performance is below market benchmarks – reflect industry standards, said John Longbrake, university spokesman.

Actually, they don’t. The bonuses are lower than industry standards because this same group of alumni, a few years ago, generated so much outrage over the $35 million in bonuses sometimes earned by individual managers (that’s the industry standard) that Harvard lowered the amount its people could make.

But they still earn an awful lot, don’t they? Especially given the fact that they’re running the endowment into the ground?

The group of alumni has proposed that no employee should be paid in excess of what the university president earns; [Larry] Summers was paid $611,000 during his last year, the latest presidential salary available.

LOL. You expect money managers to work for less than, say, five million a year? Sure, we all have to tighten our belts. But these people need to eat…

… another form of betting, in these troubled times, involves estimating how much money various universities have really lost from their endowments.

Harvard’s money managers are widely considered some of the best in the business, and still this year they reportedly may lose up to 30% of the university’s endowment.

Harvard’s own estimate is in the twenties; here you’ve got thirty… Let’s see what Edward Jay Epstein says in Slate:

[Harvard’s] recent loss of $8.1 billion from July 1 to Oct. 31, 2008, came as a stunning blow. Yet this huge loss, as staggering as it sounds, might be only the tip of the iceberg of illiquid investments. According to a source close to the Harvard Management Co., the damage, if the fund’s illiquid investments are realistically appraised, may be closer to $18 billion—or more than twice the amount previously reported.

Exotic, esoteric, risky, volatile — These are the words Epstein uses to describes Harvard’s “playing for high-stakes in the casino economy.” An insider friend of his “finds the claim by Harvard’s money managers that the fund lost only 22 percent at best ‘purely Pollyannaish.'”

You know how they could have saved a little awhile back… Before the totally predictable change in the economic climate… They could, back in casino days, have paid their money managers a little less than 25 million dollars a year. Each. Remember? When people got upset about those salaries (They were even higher than that on occasion. One year, they got 35 million.), Harvard cut back on them by a few million, and the money managers immediately quit. As who wouldn’t.

Ah. Grand days.