May 16 (Bloomberg) -- Harvard University President Drew Faust was paid $640,000 along with about $54,000 in benefits in the most recent fiscal year, according to a U.S. government filing.

The pay came on top of the use of a home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Harvard’s main campus is located, and moving expenses of $80,000, according to a form 990 filed with the Internal Revenue Service and made public by the university yesterday. The pay was for the year ended June 30. Faust was picked to succeed former Harvard President Larry Summers in February 2007.

Attention has focused on academic administrators’ salaries as endowments have shrunk and school budgets have been trimmed in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Faust and other top Harvard officials should cut their pay to avoid layoffs and preserve services, said Paul Nauert, a senior at the college and member of the Student Labor Action Movement that’s fighting firings of lower-paid employees.

“It’s very important to show that the people who made the decisions that got us to this point are willing to accept the consequences,” Nauert said in a telephone interview.

Harvard Provost Steven Hyman received $535,000 in salary and $35,000 in benefits, according to the filing. John Longbrake, a Harvard spokesman, declined to comment on the compensation data.

Endowment

Harvard’s endowment, the biggest academic fund in the world, fell 22 percent from July 1 through Oct. 31. The university has projected an endowment loss of 30 percent for the fiscal year ending June 30, the fund’s worst performance in four decades. The fund was valued at $36.9 billion at the end of the last fiscal year.

The university has closed a library and announced cuts in services such as hot breakfasts and shuttle buses in an effort to preserve funds. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which includes most of Harvard’s undergraduate teachers, will cut its budget of about $1.15 billion by about 19 percent over the next two years, Dean Michael Smith said last month.

John Hennessey, president of Stanford University near Palo Alto, California, said in December that he and other top school officials would take a voluntary salary cut of about 10 percent. Hennessey is paid about $700,000. Mark Wrighton, chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, cut 5 percent from his base salary of $560,000 in January, and said he will cut an additional 5 percent July 1.

To contact the reporter on this story: John Lauerman in Boston at jlauerman@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 16, 2009 00:01 EDT