Mar 21, 2017 08:42 AM EDT By Emily Marks, UniversityHerald Reporter

Ismail Jeilani, who graduated from the King's College London, learned early on about the high price to pay for a college education. This is why he wants to help minority students, especially Muslims, finish their degrees debt-free.

Jeilani is a project manager for QardHasan, a crowdfunding platform and community-based lending system. It is intended to be an interest-free alternative to traditional student loans.

The initiative wants to enable Muslim students to crowdfund towards the cost of pursuing higher education as well as gain access to the best student jobs. This is because Jeilani and his team believe that access to education should be universal.

BuzzFeed News reported that the system was unveiled at University College London last week. Jeilani has said that this initiative will provide more alternatives to students, especially those who cannot take out loans with interest due to religious reasons.

Jeilani added that he understands the dilemma that Muslim students go through where they have to choose which to compromise: their values or their education. This is what led him and QardHasan developers to find another way to fund tuition fees.

According to IBS Intelligence, the platform can be used to launch a 40-day crowdfunding campaign to borrow up to £30,000. Students can do this by appealing to family, friends, alumni as well as charitable institutions to invest in their education.

Moreover, QardHasan also has corporate partners who support talented students who thye may be interested in hiring later on. Students just need to showcase their potential.

College debt has become a big issue in the United States as well. It was previously reported that American students have already amassed about $1 trillion in student loan debt.

This is why students and even higher education institutions have tried to come up with alternatives to paying for a college degree. Purdue University has promoted income-share agreement (ISA), an alternative form of college financing, where students to pay for their higher education by selling a part of their future income to a sponsor.

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