Whatever else you can say about Ezra Cornell, his ideas endure. He aimed high for his namesake university, transcending the limitations of his meager schooling. He used his fortune to advance radical ideas about higher education that became commonplace only decades after their introduction at Cornell University.

Higher education for women, admitting students without regard to race and religion -- although these transformative ideas took decades to fully implement, they were always goals to which the university aspired.

As New York state's land-grant university, Cornell's new approaches to teaching, learning, research and public service, along with its proliferation of academic disciplines, immediately began to influence students from across the state, the nation and well beyond U.S. borders that continues to this day.

No founder better deserves to sport Ray-Bans.

-- Adapted by George Lowery from Morris Bishop's "A History of Cornell." This is the final column celebrating the 200th year of Ezra Cornell's birth.