The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college located in Cooper Square in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Inspired in 1830 when Peter Cooper learned about the government-supported École Polytechnique in France, Cooper Union was established in 1859.[5][6] The school was built on a radical new model of American higher education based on founder Peter Cooper's fundamental belief that an education "equal to the best technology schools [then] established"[7] should be accessible to those who qualify, independent of their race, religion, sex, wealth or social status, and should be "open and free to all".[8] The Cooper Union previously granted each admitted student a full-tuition scholarship; as of April 23, 2013, due to financial concerns, that policy has been eliminated beginning with the class entering in the Fall of 2014,[9] although every incoming student receives at the very least a fifty-percent merit scholarship.