The University of Oregon, where Knight graduated in 1959, announced Wednesday that the Nike cofounder and his wife, Penny, had committed a whopping $1 billion to establish an engineering college there. The New York Times reported it was an unexpected gift from the Knights, having surfaced from an unscheduled call.

Like other Oregon campus facilities, the new engineering school will be named in honor of the Knights. The gift brings the couple’s total commitment to the Knight Campus to more than $2 billion, including two earlier $500 million gifts (one in 2016 and one in 2021) to help expand the university’s scientific research complex. 

The new gift will allow Oregon, which now offers only engineering minors and graduate programs, to build a full undergraduate engineering program. Officials told the NYT the process will take about a decade. Bob Guldberg, a UO vice president and bioengineering professor, told the paper that the program could help ease the state’s shortage of engineers.

“This extraordinary gift is an endorsement of what higher education delivers,” Karl Scholz, president of the University of Oregon, told Fortune. “It gives us the ability to scale innovation, accelerate impact, and meet the demand for skilled engineering required by the industries of tomorrow, all without placing that financial burden on state taxpayers.”

They’ve also made several gifts connected to athletics at Oregon, including $100 million to construct the university’s basketball arena in honor of their late son, Matthew Knight. Thanks to Knight, Oregon has strong ties to the athletics retailer, with athletes there having access to new and exclusive gear and unique NIL (name, image, and likeness monetization) support. For those reasons, some people refer to the school as the “University of Nike.” (There’s even a book about it.)

The pledge also caps a major philanthropic stretch for the Knights. Just last week, the couple committed $1.1 billion to Providence St. Vincent Medical Center and Providence Heart Institute in Portland, and last year they gave $2 billion to OHSU’s Knight Cancer Institute. Knight, 88, is worth nearly $23 billion, according to Bloomberg.

The timing of the Knights’ gift

The Knights’ historic gift lands as federal support for universities is in doubt. In early 2025, the Trump administration laid off thousands at federal science agencies, slowed grant payments to colleges, and tried to cut funding for the overhead costs of research. It also pulled back DEI grants. 

The White House’s fiscal 2026 budget request also sought a nearly 36% cut to non-defense-related science research and development funding, including a cut of nearly 57% at the National Science Foundation and more than 40% at the NIH. However, Congress has largely rejected Trump and kept science funding mostly consistent. 

The administration hasn’t backed off. Its fiscal 2027 proposal again proposes cuts to scientific research and education programs, and officials have said they want more research funding to go directly to individual students and researchers, shifting away from academic institutions. 

“The president’s proposed cuts to NASA and the research agencies of the Department of Energy would hobble the broader American scientific enterprise at a crucial time when dominance in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing is essential to keeping Americans safe and prosperous,” the Association of American Universities, which lobbies on behalf of major research universities, said in a statement.

That’s where the Knights are stepping in.

“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,” Phil Knight said in a statement. “This is no time to abandon them.”

“Penny and I are grateful for the chance to invest in our most promising young people’s future in this important way,” he continued.