Nike co-founder gives $400 million to Stanford.

Stanford University had an endowment of $21.5 billion at the end of the 2014 fiscal year, or an estimated $22.25 billion through 2015. It's all a matter of which statistic you choose to look at. But what's $750 million amongst friends?

Today, Nike co-founder Phil Knight announced he was donating $400 million to his former school (he attended Oregon for his undergraduate degree) in order to create the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program, which will pay for roughly 100 students to attend Stanford and work toward global issues.

"The Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program brings the very best students from around the world to study at Stanford in any discipline they're interested in, and helps prepare them to be world leaders," Stanford President John Hennessy says.

The issue here is money. A school with one of the largest endowments in the world probably doesn't need another infusion of $400 million to its coffers for relatively nondescript reasons. Secondly, what does the scholarship actually mean? No, if we pull ourselves back from the immensity of such a donation--really--what does it mean?

"We will bring together outstanding, courageous scholars to benefit from Stanford’s innovative educational environment, who then go on to lead governments, businesses, nonprofits and other complex organizations and develop creative solutions to effect positive change." So says a statement from the school.

Courageous? But--how? How do you know it will be positive change simply because they studied there free? And--again--courageous? Courage is having your limbs blown off in war, not studying nondescript matters at Stanford for free.

It's a wonderful statement of nothing. It means nothing. It uses wonderfully polysyllabic words to make the whole situation sound important--but what's the litmus test? Those lucky enough to attend Stanford will already have a pedigree few others will ever have. But what do they accomplish with such a nondescript scholarship?

What they accomplish might be worthwhile, but is nothing courageous.