Back in 2022 I had the great good fortune to be asked to supervise the undergraduate Education Studies dissertation for Yusraa Maryam. Yusraa’s work focused upon the impact of the UK student loans system on the HE experience of Muslim students who see Interest-bearing loans are a barrier. In 2023 I pitched to extend this work within De Montfort University, through an Academic Innovation Project. Working with Yusraa, and Sumeya Loonat, we extended the focus to look at issues in relation to retention for the students, working in this context. Whilst Yusraa had finished her studies and was in-work, she was also employed as a research assistant on this project, with Sumeya acting as a mentor.

Below, I identify some of the emergent outcomes from this work, in relation to the following.

1. Student-as-producer: this includes the ways in which student needs and desires for what a more enriched and inclusive higher education might look like, might be shaped actively were those with privilege inside our institutions use that privilege to create space for those made marginal to be heard. Inside institutions like universities, predicated upon prestige, status and the commodification of both knowledge and the student experience, finding strategies, spaces and times that challenge hegemony matters. This is particularly true where social and cultural narratives, in deep relations with political desires, frame particular groups as other. Work that is predicated upon values (courage, faith, justice, respect, dignity) points towards more useful modes of student agency (beyond validating institutional EDI strategies).
2. Voice: connected to the previous point, the ability of this work to offer opportunities for students to speak their truth, and to push back against silencing, feels foundational. The students with whom we had the privilege of speaking offered a range of narratives that challenge how we view the student experience, and the ways in which we fetishise or reduce it to a particular set of characteristics.
3. Faith: in all our talk of identity and intersectionality, it feels increasingly like Faith, and the idea of a Faith as a way of life for a way of living or a way of knowing self and the world (or self in the world), has been forgotten or ignored. This forgetting or ignoring happens in plain sight, given the ways in which those of Faith conduct and bear themselves in public. This work has taught me to challenge my own preconceptions about faith and spirituality, and carries a deep and significant connection through to indigenous ways of thinking about braiding and weaving multiple characteristics, conditions, environments, times and places into our understanding of our lives as educated and educative and educating.

Overview

Interest-bearing loans are a barrier to education for some Muslim students (Abdulrahman, 2020; Malik and Wykes, 2018). Successive UK Governments have failed to implement a funding solution supporting access and participation. Moreover, there is limited research available on the impact of this system on Muslims adhering to Islamic teachings (Avdukic, 2023). This project evaluated the impacts of interest-bearing loans on Muslim student retention in one English University. It focused on career aspirations/the perceived value of Higher Education, and to amplify their voice in the development of appropriate student services.

So, our project sits inside the following conditions.

1. Student loans containing interest* are a barrier to education for some Muslim students, as Islam prohibits interest.
2. There is no funding solution equivalent to the SLC that supports access and participation for impacted individuals and communities.
3. There is limited research on the impact of this, in terms of Muslim students balancing their education and adhering to their faith.

[* riba, or loans issued for a predetermined time with the premise that they will be repaid with excess, sometimes classified as usury’]

We are mindful that there are competing fatwa and positions, in relation to this issue. Whilst Riba is prohibited in Islam, there are discussions on whether the UK student loan system falls under its definition. Most student loan systems with interest would be seen Riba-bearing, but some have a different view for the UK system (e.g. because the outstanding debt can be written off, and is only taken after earning a set amount). Then there is the necessity argument, which is separate. Since 2017, there is an argument that this has been taken advantage of to dismiss the issue, rather than look at those who do see it as an issue

Individuals feel they have a good understanding of Islamic finance, and that accruing, paying, charging or receiving interest is not permissible or at least problematic. However some Islamic scholars believe that education is important, especially where there is no alternative, so can be supported with loans. The lack of a consistent ruling causes some confusion for those making HE decisions (DfE, 2019).

Some relevant resources for this are as follows.

• Levelling Up Unequal Access to University Education (muslimcensus.co.uk)
• Student Loans: Halal or Haram, Any Alternatives? | Dr. Mufti Abdur-Rahman ibn Yusuf: Skoda CWFC Season Launch (youtube.com)
• Alternative Student Finance: current and future students’ perspectives (publishing.service.gov.uk)

However, we wished to understand the experiences of a subset of those students impacted by the current student loans regime. As a result, we investigated the following questions.

• What is the impact of interest-based student loans on Muslim students’ academic and career aspirations?
• How does the student loans system impact how Muslim students conceptualise the value of higher education?

Maybe more Muslim girls and Muslim students would enter the uni. Like many I know try to look for alternative routes. If it was inclusive [student loan system], you’d see a lot more Muslims in the University. [Interviewee 2]

Student-as-Producer*

*We deliberately take the idea of student-as producer as a key organising concept for this project. This builds upon the work of Mike Neary, who very sadly passed away in 2022. I am currently working on a book about Mike’s practice, writing and activism. Neary (2020) asks how do revolutionary teachers teach? He asks us to consider students as activists in thinking not just about the curriculum, but the conditions inside which the classroom is reproduced. He asks us to consider students not as consumers, but in relationship with those clusters teachers, the classroom, the curriculum, the University, pedagogy, and more. He asks us to consider the relationality of the University, and how our democratic activism might reproduce a more sane set of spaces for learning and teaching than those we currently inhabit, and which reproduce our current, crisis-written, insane world.

A side point is to identify that throughout this work, Yusraa, Sumeya and I have illustrated our thinking through the work of acrylic artist Heba Zagout, who was martyred in Gaza in October 2023. Her work points us towards the hope that we might know the world otherwise.

The student-as-producer perspective builds from: first, from the Education Studies’ undergraduate dissertation of Yusraa Maryam, who has lived experience in relation to this issue; and second, the mentoring relationship between Yusraa and Sumeya Loonat, a PhD student researching institutional student support mechanisms. The project also builds connections through these students to the University Islamic Society and Prayer Room, which were pivotal in ensuring that recruitment can be managed in a trusting manner.

Crucially, this was a cross-institutional project, connecting Muslim student experiences to issues of retention. A series of semi-structured interviews with 12 current and former Muslim students, led by Yusraa with Richard, centred lived experiences. With dignity at its heart, and guided by positionality and reflexivity, the project began from the premise that institutional structures, cultures, and practices need to respond to the needs of these students, to support their retention and aspirations (Stevenson et al., 2017).

Revaluing relationality: centring voice and including Faith

The project catalysed richer understandings of how faith and academic aspirations interrelate and impact on student, family and community choices. It will lead to two briefing papers for senior leaders and programme teams, alongside a collaborative audit with the Aziz Foundation on the British Muslim First-Year Student experience, in partnership with 4 undergraduate student advisors. Here, processes, relationships and outcomes, will be produced with students as authors and activists; activists in the pedagogy that might help reimagine the University. Or at least activists in the pedagogy that might help University to engage with more voices in its reimagining.

I feel like if you’re not practicing, or if you’re not, like if you’re a non-Muslim then you won’t ever understand fully why it’s a problem. And that for us, interest is like one of the big major sins. So for you to get involved in that, it’s pretty much saying that you’re not gonna have a good afterlife. [Interviewee 1]

Back then I would go to every single guest speaker there was… because I wanted to sort of soak up that experience. And when you go through University [you] should be experiencing that more, but I’m actually experiencing that less, because I just simply can’t afford to do that anymore and so it’s sad. [Interviewee 8]

The project desired and considered the following.

• Making clear the complexities of the student experience and of retention, in particular in relation to faith-based decisions.
• Making clear the need to understand the impact of the extant student loans system on the retention of some Muslim students.
• Shaping targeted interventions, like bursaries or pastoral support.

I was thinking of dropping out. So I went to my course leader.. told him that I wanted to drop out and he was like why? ‘Cause I do… enjoy my studies and when I revealed the financial situation, he got me in contact with the DMU Imam and then we spoke about possibly financing it myself. So right now I’m not on a student loan, I’m financing it myself, which is difficult, but I’m doing it. [Interviewee 8]

• Building capacity for empathy and equity in the student experience.
• A richer understanding of the experience of Muslim students, and to frame inclusive activities inside-and-outside the classroom.
• By moving away from homogenising Muslim students, to understand how appropriate pastoral care might support students who wish to adhere to Islamic principles.

in second year when I started questioning, I was like but nobody really needs Muslim architects and Muslim designers, so what’s the point of me doing it? [Interviewee 2]

• Giving Muslim students made marginal in discourse a safe space and voice to share their lived experiences, and to have their faith-based decisions recognised as valid.
• By giving attention to issues hidden in plain sight, and that have an impact on the wider University experience and wellbeing, we can begin to shape a sense of belonging rather than further isolation.
• The potential to develop interventions that support the full range of students, and that recognises the complexities of marginalisation.

I really didn’t want to go uni in the case of taking a student loan out, and then my parents came to conclusion that they’ll just pay it off by working, and now it’s got like my parents working like several more hours. [Interviewee 7]

• The potential to rethink perspectives and perceptions about Muslim student engagement and experiences.
• Helping staff in a personal tutoring context, in relation to signposting, and developing empathy and connections with their students.
• Awareness can support with planning and timetabling of extra-curricular activities that may have an impact on student engagement.

[Taking the loan] is quite difficult and, you know, it has weighed on the conscious a lot, but, you know, it’s just… I’m kind of just in a rock and a hard place. There’s no kind of right thing to do because whatever I do, I’m compromising something else. [Interviewee 12]

I have included below a recent presentation we made up the DMU annual learning and teaching conference, on this issue. A follow-up post will detail ways in which we have begun to extend this work in partnership The Aziz Foundation, as part of their Muslim-friendly universities programme of work, through an institutional audit. In this, we are encouraging a renewed relationality within our universities, in order that we might hold space for a new way of knowing ourselves, each other and the world.

Presentation: The Impact of The Current Student Loans Regime on Muslim Student Engagement and Retention in English Higher Education

REFERENCES

Abdulrahman, M.M., (2020) ‘Higher Education Loans Board in Kenya from the Islamic Sharia Perspective’, International Journal of Islamic Thought, 18, pp. 34-42. Available at: http://journalarticle.u…18-Dec-2020_4_34-42.pdf

Avdukic, A., Khaleel, F., Abdullah, A., & Brawe, A. H. (2023). Religion as a barrier to the use of student loans for higher education: A community-based participatory study with Somalis living in England. British Educational Research Journal, 49, 370–404. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3847

The Aziz Foundation: https://www.azizfoundation.org.uk/.

Heba Zagout’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zagoutheba/?hl=en.

Malik, A. and Wykes, E. (2018) British Muslims in UK higher education. London: Bridge Institute.

Neary, M. (2020). Student as Producer: How Do Revolutionary Teachers Teach? London: Zed Books.

Stevenson, J., Demack, S., Stiell, B., Abdi, M., Ghaffar, F. and Hassan, S. (2017) The social mobility challenges faced by young Muslims. UK: Social Mobility Commission.