Nike co-founder and chairman Phil Knight is donating $400 million to a scholarship program at Stanford University. He received his M.B.A. from Stanford in 1962 and credited an entrepreneurship class he took with helping him draft the business plan of what would later become Nike. The Knight-Hennessy program already has a $750 million endowment, which Stanford said is the largest fully endowed scholarship program in the world, besting the Rhodes Scholarship program.
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Stanford, located near Palo Alto, California, is the most prolific fundraiser in higher education, collecting a record $1.6 billion in the year through June 30, according to the Council for Aid to Education, which tracks university giving. The scale of funding for the Knight-Hennessy Scholars will ensure continuity for generations to come.
A faculty committee will soon set specific criteria for awarding the scholarship. Hennessy, who dreamed up the program, will serve as its founding director after he steps down from his current post at the end of the summer.
The program aims to find solutions for some of the world’s most pressing challenges, including “the environment, health, education and human rights”, according to the news release.
Students who are accepted into the program will receive three years of funding to study law, business, medicine, engineering, humanities, education and environmental sciences. Additionally, a fund will be established to back nonprofit social startups founded by Knight-Hennessy scholars and alumni. Admissions criteria will be decided by a faculty advisory board, and a separate committee of faculty and leaders outside of Stanford will make the final selection of scholars.
The university announced the scholarship on February 24, Knight’s 78th birthday.
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The program aims to attract scholars from around the world who have shown “leadership and civic commitment”, the statement says.
