Phil and Penny Knight Pledge $1 Billion for University of Oregon Engineering College

EUGENE, Ore. — Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, have pledged $1 billion to create an undergraduate engineering college at the University of Oregon, one of the largest single private donations ever made to a U.S. public university. The gift will bring full engineering degree programs to a campus that has historically offered the subject only through minors and graduate-level programs.

The pledge came during an unscheduled call with university leadership. Under Oregon’s public university structure, the state’s primary undergraduate engineering programs have been concentrated at Oregon State University in Corvallis. University of Oregon President Karl Scholz said the new college would expand research capacity without placing a financial burden on state taxpayers.

The donation brings the Knights’ contributions to the university’s scientific initiatives past $2 billion. They gave $500 million in 2016 and another $500 million in 2021 to establish and expand the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact, a research complex designed to speed the translation of discoveries into clinical therapies and commercial applications.

University officials, including Vice President and bioengineering professor Bob Guldberg, said the undergraduate college aims to address workforce shortages in Oregon’s technology and manufacturing sectors. Those sectors include the Silicon Forest, the high-tech industrial cluster in the Portland metropolitan area.

Knight, 88, graduated from the University of Oregon in 1959 and competed as a middle-distance runner under track coach Bill Bowerman. He earned a Master of Business Administration from Stanford University in 1962. Two years later, Knight and Bowerman each put $500 into Blue Ribbon Sports, the distributor that became Nike Inc. Bloomberg estimates Knight’s net worth at approximately $23 billion.

The couple’s earlier university gifts include $100 million for Matthew Knight Arena, the basketball facility named for their late son, who died in a scuba diving accident in 2004. Over several decades, Knight’s financial backing has also supported academic facilities, athletic infrastructure and student-athlete Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) support structures.

The engineering pledge follows other billion-dollar commitments by the Knights to Pacific Northwest institutions. They committed $1.1 billion to Providence St. Vincent Medical Center and the Providence Heart Institute in Portland, after earlier multi-billion-dollar contributions to Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) to establish and expand the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute.

The gift also comes amid debate over federal research funding for higher education. Federal policy shifts and budget proposals have targeted non-defense research and development, with proposed cuts of up to 57% at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and more than 40% at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Proposed administrative actions have sought to change indirect cost recovery rules, which govern reimbursements to universities for housing federally funded laboratories, and to direct financial awards to individual researchers rather than institutional campus overhead.

Responding to proposed federal science budget cuts, the Association of American Universities (AAU), which represents leading North American research universities, warned that reductions at agencies including NASA and the Department of Energy could compromise national capabilities in artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

“To make an audacious dream a reality requires more than a vivid imagination. It also requires the sort of opportunity that our great American universities, both public and private, have historically provided,” Knight said in a statement accompanying the announcement. “This is no time to abandon them.”

University officials said planning and administrative development for the engineering college will begin immediately, with full degree offerings expected to roll out progressively over the next 10 years.