The six highest-paid employees of the Harvard Management Company, who made a total of more than $100-million in salary and bonuses last year for overseeing the university's $19-billion endowment, may get a pay cut in future years.

The chairman of the company's board said in a written statement on Friday that the board had reduced the maximum payouts for fund managers in "extraordinary years" like 2003, when the endowment rose sharply in value.

Although neither the board nor a university spokeswoman would say what the pay caps would be, Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard's president, told the student-run newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, that the changes would lead to "a significant reduction in top compensation levels."

The action followed the denunciation of the pay packages by seven Harvard alumni who are approaching their 35th-reunion year, a time when graduates are customarily asked to make major gifts to the university. A letter from the seven, sent to Mr. Summers in November, questioned whether Harvard really needed or would make good use of such gifts, and pointed out that the gifts would probably be dwarfed by the fund managers' payroll (The Chronicle, February 6).

The endowment managers typically receive base salaries of $400,000. Most of their compensation comes in the form of bonuses that are tied to the performance of the funds they manage, relative to benchmarks in the investment industry.

Last year, Maurice Samuels, who oversees the foreign fixed-income fund, was the management company's top earner, with total compensation of $35.1-million. David R. Mittleman, who manages domestic fixed-income assets, was next, with earnings of $34.1-million, according to figures provided by the company.

Company officials have said that the bonuses are in line with what the managers would receive for the same work outside the university and are, in fact, less than Harvard would have to pay to outside managers.

But the bonuses do not guarantee that Harvard will hold onto the managers. Jeffrey B. Larson, who earned $17.3-million as the foreign-equities manager in 2003, recently said he would leave to start his own firm with 14 other Harvard Management Company employees. Harvard said it would invest $700-million in the new firm's hedge fund and commodities fund.

Last year's bonuses were extraordinarily high because the endowment jumped more than 12 percent, according to Harvard officials.

But the seven alumni questioned whether the payments truly reflected the market for financial services. "There exists no reasonable standard by which Harvard's financial managers can be said to have earned sums anywhere close to these levels," they said in their letter.

"Does anyone deserve to make this much money working for a university?," David Kaiser, one of the signers of the letter, asked in an interview on Sunday. "In my opinion, the answer is no. Working for a university is supposed to be something people do for other than financial reasons."

Mr. Kaiser also questioned who at the university is seeing the benefits of the endowment's growth at a time when the library has had to lay off employees because of a budget shortfall.

Last month, another Harvard graduate, Terry M. Bennett, threatened to sue the university and called for an accounting of the fund managers' salaries. Mr. Bennett, a 1964 graduate of Harvard Medical School, gave the university $4-million in 1991.

"The board continues to believe the compensation system is fundamentally sound and a good economic deal for Harvard," D. Ronald Daniel, Harvard's treasurer and chairman of the management company's board, said in the written statement.

The university spokeswoman said the university would have no further comment on the issue.