Billionaire Nike cofounder Phil Knight gives $1 billion to his alma mater: ‘This is no time to abandon’ higher education

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  "company": {
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    "url": "https://fortune.com/2026/09/24/billionaire-nike-cofounder-phil-knight-gives-1-billion-to-university-of-oregon-no-time-to-abandon-higher-education/",
    "title": "Billionaire Nike cofounder Phil Knight gives $1 billion to his alma mater: ‘This is no time to abandon’ higher education",
    "assets": "engineering college",
    "author": "Sydney Lake",
    "excerpt": "Just as the Trump administration has retreated from supporting higher education institutions, billionaire philanthropists have jumped in. MacKenzie Scott has donated more than $1 billion collectively to HBCUs , and Nike cofounder Phil Knight just made the largest known donation to a public flagship university. 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...",
    "summary": "Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny have committed $1 billion to the University of Oregon to establish a new engineering college.",
    "location": "Eugene, Oregon, USA",
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    "image_url": "https://fortune.com/img-assets/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/GettyImages-1788682934-1-e1790192681426.jpg?resize=1200,600",
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    "published_at": "2026-09-24T07:03:00Z",
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        "state": "Oregon",
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    "article_sentence": "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.",
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    "related_company_name": "University of Oregon",
    "related_company_domain": "uoregon.edu"
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  -H "X-API-KEY: $AUTOBOUND_API_KEY" \
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  -d '{"domain":"nike.com","limit":20}'