Nike founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny have committed $1 billion to the University of Oregon, a gift that university officials believe ranks as the largest single donation ever made to an American public university. The announcement, first reported by Good News Network, has cleared the way for the university to establish an entirely new college of engineering.
Knight contacted university president Karl Scholz earlier in September with the news. Scholz was sitting in a San Francisco airport terminal when the call arrived, and he acknowledged the conversation had not been on his schedule for that day.
The Knights' philanthropic footprint is already visible throughout the Eugene campus, where their name appears on the law center, athletic facilities, and the library. Over the decades, their foundation has provided the university with a combined $1 billion in gifts, a history of support that has led some to refer to the institution informally as the University of Nike.
"One of the most successful businesspeople in the history of humanity, and one of the most generous philanthropists in the history of humanity, has said higher education is worth an investment of this magnitude," Scholz told Good News Network, describing the gift as "a screaming endorsement of the importance of what we're doing."
University vice-president Bob Guldberg said the funding will enable the school to consolidate several separate academic programs into a comprehensive undergraduate engineering degree. The expansion addresses a documented shortage of engineers in Oregon, a gap noted by the New York Times. Guldberg and Scholz had kept Knight informed of their engineering plans for years before the donation materialized.
The timing carries particular weight for the university's finances. Oregon has long benefited from out-of-state student enrollment, but staff expect that revenue stream to decline in the coming years. Scholz had recently drawn up $65 million in budget reductions before the Knight gift was announced.
While the $1 billion figure sets a record for public institutions, larger donations have gone to private universities, including repeated nine-figure and ten-figure gifts from Michael Bloomberg to Johns Hopkins. Other major contributions in recent American history have gone to university medical centers, including a previous gift from Knight himself.
The Knights have declined interview requests since the news broke, but released a statement addressing the gift. "To make an audacious dream a reality requires more than a vivid imagination," Knight said in the statement. "It also requires the sort of opportunity that our great American universities, both public and private, have historically provided. This is no time to abandon them."