'Is University Worth It?'

Andrew Day is a member of the senior leadership team at The Philosophy Foundation, a charity which brings Philosophy into schools. The idea is that teaching children philosophy has a profound effect on their ability to learn and think independently; the charity also encourages and aims to sponsor non-privileged children to study Philosophy at University.

Andrew's father raised himself out of poverty to become a university professor, while Andrew went from a comprehensive school to read Philosophy and Social Anthropology at Cambridge. Andrew is interested in the role of language in the development of thinking. Indeed, he has a background in language teaching, as he is currently the director and author of Avalon Book Company, which publishes English Language Teaching resources based on speaking rather than writing. For two and a half years he ran the Avalon TEFL school, which employed 50 staff; under Andrew's care it expanded its overseas partner-schools from four to thirty.

Andrew also enjoys the story-telling aspect of his philosophy teaching, which ties in with his free-lance work as a writer. He is currently writing a play for the Charity Only Connect, a theatre charity that works with men who have been through the criminal justice system to produce shows of professional quality and original content. He also works for an enterprise called Protege, which reintroduces excluded young people to education through arts and media projects.

Ellie Howard currently runs Visiting Women at Work, a social action project that introduces school girls and victims of domestic violence to women in the workplace. She also works one day a week at the think tank Civitas assisting with research into education and family matters.

Ellie describes herself as enormously passionate about aspirations and personal goals. But while she is academic, she has taken a rather unusual approach to her own higher education. For the last 18 months she has experimented with a range of different positions to 'find her niche'. Ellie attended a state school on Hayling Island, followed by a nearby sixth form. Because of her initial financial motivation, she did not think that she would attend university.

After working in real estate, sport, PR, corporate film, financial lobbying and spending a short time running her own business, as well as travelling to Brussels, Ellie changed her mind.  She spent an 'awful lot of time' experiencing internal conflict and greatly missed the rigour of learning and inquiry, realising some of the enormous benefits of university. Ellie has now accepted a place at Kings College to read Politics of the International Economy and will start in September, she also has a masters in sight.

Bruce Mclean is one of the major figures in contemporary British art. He has obtained international recognition for his paintings, prints and sculptures, which often use humour to confront the pretention of the art world, institutional politics and wider social issues. It was while studying at St. Martins between 1963-66 that he first started to rebel (alongside others such as Richard long and Gilbert and George) against formalist academicism - the doctrine that an artwork’s form is more important than its narrative and relationship with the surrounding world. In 1965, he abandoned conventional sculpture in favour of temporary sculptures which involved performance of an often-satirical nature. One such piece (Pose Work for Plinths 1, Tate, 1971) was in reflection of Henry Moore’s reclining figures on plinths. Bruce's initial intention was to take art off the plinth; in the end, to be ‘perverse’ he warped his body into different shapes on the plinths and took a series of photos. Later in his career, his focus turned to painting where once again he parodied the expressionist styles prevalent at that time with a bold and confident approach which has influenced his contemparies and younger artists.

Bruce is a teacher as well as an artist. In the seventies, he lectured at the Croydon School of Art, where he taught sculpture. More recently, he was professor of fine art and head of graduate painting at the Slade.