New York University’s controversial penchant under President John Sexton for doling out real-estate perks to top professors and executives also extended to his son.

Jed Sexton, whose sole affiliation with NYU was his status as the president’s son, for years enjoyed a spacious faculty apartment while the university experienced a “severe” housing shortage, The Post has learned.

In spring 2002, NYU ordered that a pair of one-bedroom apartments normally reserved for law school faculty be combined into a lavish, two-story spread in the heart of Greenwich Village, property records show.

The Harvard-educated Sexton, who was a 33-year-old aspiring actor at the time, shared the new duplex with his newlywed wife, Danielle Decrette, for the next five years, according to documents and people briefed on the situation.

That’s despite the fact that NYU officials, just weeks earlier, had warned in a written report of a “severe housing shortage” for faculty, “especially of larger units.”

The report was addressed to John Sexton as he prepared to take the helm as president after more than a decade as dean of NYU Law School.

The arrangement adds to the scrutiny on NYU. During Sexton’s tenure as president, the university has come under fire for rewarding a select group of faculty and administrators with forgivable mortgage loans to buy multimillion-dollar vacation homes.

In written responses to questions from The Post, NYU spokesman John Beckman declined to comment on whether the younger Sexton and his wife paid market rates for the duplex created at NYU-owned 240 Mercer St.

According to property records, the duplex’s two floors were connected by a staircase that was installed at NYU’s expense, along with a revamped heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system.

“We don’t discuss the specifics of residents’ rent, though I can absolutely say [Jed Sexton] was charged rent,” Beckman said.

If current rates in the high-rise tower at 240 Mercer are any guide, the market rate would have been stiff: A single one-bedroom apartment for a student can run upwards of $3,000 a month — never mind a far roomier faculty duplex.

Jed Sexton and his wife, an administrative employee at the law school at the time, had each occupied separate apartments at 240 Mercer since the early to mid-1990s, despite the building’s designation for law students and faculty, documents show.

The building at West Third and Mercer streets is just three blocks from Vanderbilt Hall, the classroom center of the law school.

According to NYU’s Beckman, each had initially moved in as part of a program to address a vacancy problem in the early to mid-1990s. The program also rented units to other children of faculty and administrators, as well as students from neighboring law schools, he said.

NYU housing officials “went so far as to hire a firm to set up and manage a plan to market the apartments to bring down the vacancy rate,” Beckman said. “This was all discussed openly with the law school board.”

He added that throughout NYU’s faculty housing system, “there are nearly 70 other instances in the past decade in which two separate units were combined to make larger apartments.”

Beckman, however, declined to comment on why NYU offered the combined duplex apartment at 240 Mercer to Jed Sexton and his wife in spring 2002, when the housing glut reportedly had turned into a squeeze for university faculty.

According to a March 8, 2002, report by John Sexton’s presidential transition team, the housing shortage was threatening the school’s ability to attract new faculty at the time.

In response, the report recommended that NYU begin dangling housing perks to prospective faculty, including the forgivable mortgage loans.

John Sexton took up many of those recommendations in the coming years, resulting in loans forgiven on pricey vacation homes for himself and other top NYU officials that stirred a media frenzy last year.

Sexton, who has clashed with faculty over a number of issues including NYU’s aggressive expansion plan, has said he will step down as president when his contract runs out in 2016.

Previously, according to the 2002 report, “NYU suffer(ed) in comparison with peer institutions that are able to offer better housing of diverse kinds.”

Yet Jed Sexton and his wife were allowed to live in the duplex at 240 Mercer St. until 2007, when they moved their growing family to a $1 million home in Connecticut, property records show.

Beckman said in an e-mail that the 2002 report on a faculty housing shortage didn’t apply to the law school. NYU played no role in the financing of the Wilton, Conn., home, he said.