July 23 (Bloomberg) -- Cornell University President David Skorton traveled to India in January 2007 to meet with government leaders and alumni, taking an entourage of six to four cities in 10 days. His return trip in May lasted two days and included one fundraising aide and stops in two cities.

As universities fire staff, freeze professor pay and cancel construction to make up for endowment losses and fundraising declines, presidents of some U.S. schools are tightening travel, perquisites and their own pay. While the cuts are “trivial” compared with deficits the schools face, they show leadership, said John Isaacson, an executive recruiter who specializes in college president searches.

At Middlebury College, spending has been halved on events, staff and maintenance at the president’s house. Amherst College and Stanford University leaders volunteered pay cuts. Brown University’s president chopped her salary three times. Debora Spar, who heads Barnard College in New York, surrendered her chauffeured car, a perk of the presidency for three decades.

“College and university presidents should reduce their own budgets for two reasons: first, to show leadership, and second, to save the money,” Skorton said in an e-mail. “Each of us should also consider voluntary reduction of personal compensation at a time when employees are being laid off and uncertainty prevails.”

Barnard saves about $50,000 annually without the president’s driver and Toyota Avalon, after adding the cost of the car service Spar now uses for off-campus meetings, said Joanne Kwong, a spokeswoman.

Shared Sacrifice

“Eliminating the president’s car and driver made good sense in this economic climate, especially in New York City, where car services and taxis are plentiful,” Spar said in an e- mail.

Trimming presidential salaries and administrative budgets won’t dent “the large and fundamental cuts that colleges and universities will have to do over a three- to four-year period,” said Isaacson, who runs the Boston-based Isaacson, Miller search firm. Schools go too far if they cut presidential expenses so deeply they hurt fundraising, said Isaacson.

Not all presidents are cutting their pay. E. Gordon Gee, who leads Ohio State University in Columbus, will make $1.6 million this fiscal year, a $200,000 increase from last year for his “newly established supplemental retirement fund,” said Shelly Hoffman, a spokeswoman.

At Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, some students are calling for President Drew Faust to reduce her pay after the school cut 275 administrative, clerical and technical jobs this year, said Colette Perold, a rising junior and an organizer of the Student Labor Action Movement, which supports Harvard’s workers.

Travel, Catering, Consulting

“She’s not promoting the message of shared sacrifice, not even the most baseline gesture,” Perold, 21, said in an interview. Harvard won’t comment on Faust’s pay, said John Longbrake, a spokesman.

Faust and the school’s provost cut spending on travel, consulting, catering and business entertainment. Their offices eliminated unfilled staff positions, Longbrake said. The school scaled back construction in Cambridge and in Boston’s Allston neighborhood to help save $500 million a year.

Faust, who became president two years ago, lives in a Harvard-owned home and was paid $693,739 in salary and benefits for fiscal 2008, according to an income tax filing made public by the university. Harvard lost an estimated 30 percent of its endowment, valued at $36.9 billion on June 30, 2008, in the year since then, the school said.

John Hennessy, the president of Stanford, near Palo Alto, California, lowered his salary by 10 percent, as did Ron Liebowitz, the president of Middlebury, in Middlebury, Vermont, according to the schools.

Compensation Constraint

Mark S. Wrighton, who runs Washington University in St. Louis, took a 5 percent pay cut in January and another 5 percent reduction July 1 to show this “is not business as usual,” he said. Most faculty didn’t receive a raise at the beginning of the fiscal year, he said.

“I wanted to signal that we would need to save money,” Wrighton said in an interview. “And of course by reducing my own salary, it made it easier for people to understand the need to introduce financial constraint in our compensation programs more broadly.”

Brown University President Ruth Simmons asked the Brown Corp. to reduce her pay for fiscal 2008, 2009 and 2010, said Tom Tisch, chancellor of the corporation that runs the school in Providence, Rhode Island. Her compensation in the fiscal year that ended June 30 dropped 17 percent from a year earlier and will fall a yet undetermined amount this year, according to the school.

Goldman, Texas Instruments

Simmons’s pay included $818,462 in salary and benefits, according to a fiscal 2008 tax filing provided by the school. Simmons, who lives in a university-owned home, sits on the boards of the Goldman Sachs Group Inc., in New York, and Texas Instruments Inc., in Dallas.

“She had a very keen antenna as to the changes in the economic environment,” Tisch said in an interview. “She had a natural understanding for the appropriateness and significance of an adjustment in her own salary.”

Visitors to Amherst’s president, Anthony Marx, can see cutbacks. Marx dims his office lights and is scaling back refreshments for guests, said Caroline Hanna, a spokeswoman for the school in Amherst, Massachusetts. Marx’s office trimmed 2 percent from the fiscal 2009 budget and an additional 15 percent this fiscal year.

Skipping Davos

The savings will come from “carefully planning travel expenses,” and cutting meals and catering, Hanna said. Marx also has taken a 5 percent pay cut. He made $503,357 in salary and benefits in fiscal 2008, according to a tax filing provided by the school.

Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, skipped January’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to save, said Ron Ozio, a spokesman. Gutmann froze her pay and donated $100,000 for undergraduate scholarships, Ozio said. She earned $1.09 million in fiscal 2007 salary and benefits, according to the latest publicly available tax filing.

Skorton, who lives in a Cornell-owned home in Ithaca, New York, and uses an apartment rented by the school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side near the medical school, volunteered a 10 percent cut in his compensation beginning in January. He made $730,614 in salary and benefits, according to a school tax filing for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2007, the most recent available.

Skorton, a cardiologist, left two positions in the president’s office unfilled in the last the school year, said Simeon Moss, a Cornell spokesman. The school estimated its endowment value fell 27 to 30 percent in the fiscal year that ended June 30 and projects a $150 million budget deficit over five years, Moss said.

Bus for Jet

In December, Skorton started riding a Cornell bus that shuttles students and faculty between the school’s Ithaca and New York campuses instead of flying, as his schedule permits, Moss said. The coach takes five hours and costs $150 round trip. Flying costs as much as $600 and takes an hour.

For the 2007 India trip, Skorton met with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other officials in government, business and education, Moss said. The trip’s purpose was to “create a closer mission between Cornell and India and to reinvigorate ties with alumni there,” Moss said.

Skorton’s May visit included meetings with two alumni. One was Ratan Tata, whose trust in 2008 established a $25 million Cornell endowment for agriculture and nutrition in India, and additional $25 million endowment for Indian students attending Cornell.

After spending time with Skorton in India, Tata flew to Ithaca, where he and Skorton appeared together for Tata’s class reunion.

To contact the reporter on this story: Janet Frankston Lorin in New York jlorin@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 23, 2009 00:01 EDT