Nike's Phil Knight Gives $1B to University of Oregon to Launch Its First Undergraduate Engineering Programme

Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, have committed $1B (£740M) to the University of Oregon to create a new engineering college, a sum the university says is the largest gift ever made to a comprehensive public university.

The money establishes the Knight College of Engineering at the couple's namesake campus in Eugene, an announcement Oregon made on 23 September. It also hands a major public university something it has never had. Oregon currently offers only engineering minors and graduate courses, and the gift will fund a full undergraduate engineering programme for the first time in its history.

The timing is as striking as the figure. The pledge lands as American higher education absorbs deep federal cuts and Oregon weighs budget reductions of its own, and Knight met that backdrop head-on. 'This is no time to abandon them,' he said of the country's universities.

A Record Gift Born of a Phone Call

Oregon's leaders have long been used to Knight's cheques. His name sits on the university's library and its law centre, and the ties run so deep that some simply call the place the University of Nike.

This year, though, when the 88-year-old phoned university president Karl Scholz, he and Penny had something far larger in mind, according to The New York Times. The call produced what the university bills as the biggest known gift to a public flagship in the country.

Scholz said the couple had once more backed an idea before it existed, giving 'at a scale that is genuinely hard to take in.' It is their third commitment at this level in a decade, following two $500M (£370M) gifts, in 2016 and 2021, that built and grew the Knight Campus.

Their total there now exceeds $2B (£1.48B).

What the Gift Does, and What It Does Not

Spread over roughly 10 years, the money will pay for a third building on the Knight Campus, recruit faculty and staff, and cover the college's running costs in what the university calls perpetuity. Students will train in bioengineering alongside fields such as medicine, data science, and biotechnology.

It will not, however, close the hole in Oregon's day-to-day finances. The university is weighing a shortfall of around $65M (£48M) as enrolment slips, and the gift is tied to the new college rather than general operations. As The New York Times noted, even the largest donations rarely erase the strains now facing public universities, with federal research funding under sustained pressure.

The college builds on groundwork already in place. Since 2016, the Knight Campus has established Oregon's first engineering department, graduated the first engineers in the university's history, and grown to 17 laboratories working with more than 500 students and trainees each year. Its graduate students win National Science Foundation fellowships at about 40%, well above the national rate near 15%, and it has helped spin out more than a dozen startups.

Why Oregon Is Betting on Engineers

The rationale rests on a shortage. Oregon expects roughly 2,500 engineering vacancies a year, positions employers rank among the hardest in the state to fill. Oregon holds close to a tenth of the country's semiconductor workforce, yet trains fewer people for those jobs, relative to the industry's size, than any other major semiconductor state.

Employers in biotechnology, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence name engineering talent as one of their most pressing needs, and a 2026 report from the National Science Foundation and the Bureau of Labor Statistics projected STEM employment growing at three times the rate of other work.

The university expects returns well beyond the campus. A consultant's report estimates the project could generate about $3B (£2.22B) in economic activity across Oregon, some $1.2B (£888M) in wages, and roughly $119M (£88M) in state and local taxes.

For the Knights, the gift caps an extraordinary philanthropic run. Last week the couple pledged $1.1B (£814M) to Providence St Vincent Medical Center and its heart institute, and last year they gave $2B (£1.48B) to Oregon Health & Science University's cancer institute. Earlier gifts include $100M (£74M) for the university's basketball arena, named for their late son, Matthew Knight. Knight, whose fortune Bloomberg puts near $23B (£17B), stands with Penny among the most consequential donors in the state.

Oregon still needs to clear the college through state and shared governance channels before its degrees can be offered.