PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — International students from China and their families have found a lot to like about the University of Maine Presque Isle.
Thanks to wealthy Chinese sending their children to American high schools and colleges and a long-serving math professor originally from Beijing, UMPI has had 133 students from China since 2004.
Tung Liu, a senior from Beijing studying journalism and business, came to UMPI with the hopes of getting a solid higher education and improving his English.
“It would be better for me to learn English,” he said of studying in the U.S. After he graduates this spring, Liu is planning to seek a career in media, likely in China and possibly with a broadcasting company his father runs or in an industry publication.
“I really like cars and autos, so maybe I will go to an auto magazine,” he said.
University of Maine Presque Isle professor Zhu-Qi Lu, originally from Beijing, has been teaching math at UMPI since 1988 and has helped international students from China as they study in northern Maine.
(Anthony Brino)
In addition to small class sizes and a small community of Chinese students and professors, Liu said he was happy to attend UMPI so he could snowboard at Bigrock Mountain during free time.
“I knew there is a lot of snow here,” said Liu, who has competed in professional snowboarding in Beijing, where winter sports take place on artificial snow and terrain.
Liu and other students often face a bit of a culture shock when they come to the U.S., including a drastically different language and food. Some Chinese UMPI students have attended Presque Isle High School through the school district’s international program, while others come for the first time as college freshman.
Since 2009 UMPI has been enrolling students in affiliation with Siyuan University, a private college in Xi’an, China, where students can also take UMPI classes online for credit. As of the fall of 2017, 11 students from China were enrolled at UMPI, according to the university. They pay the non-resident/out-of-state tuition rate that amounts to $365 per credit hour, or about $22,800 for a full-year’s tuition, room, board and other fees.
Chinese students at UMPI have also had the guidance of math professor Zhu-Qi Lu, a native of Beijing who’s been teaching at UMPI since 1988.
“We try our best to help them. Each Friday, my wife and I will take our van and take them to do some shopping,” said Lu, who also hosts students at his home for the Chinese new year and other holidays.
“A lot of Chinese students are going to American schools,” Lu said.
More than 350,000 Chinese students studied at U.S. higher education institutions in 2017, according to the Institute of International Education.
While prestigious private and research universities attract many international students, many also go to small and regional public universities.
“We have small classes, our teachers are friendly and it’s very safe,” Lu said. “They have American roommates, they have to speak English. After the first year, they change a lot.”
Many of China’s wealthy families have invested in American or European educations for their children, who will often return to China for jobs in business and government.
Zening Ye, a freshman at UMPI from the city of Nanning in southwestern China, attended Presque Isle High School and is now studying business management and math. Ye, who also skis, said his father runs a consumer imports company and wants him to join the business with financial skills
Part of the experience for Chinese students studying in the U.S. also includes exposure to ideas, organization, media and products that are banned by the Chinese central government.
Notably for many college students is access to an open Internet. Websites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are banned in China, and many forms of media are censored.
“It’s kind of a strange situation” for China’s top power brokers to send their children to democratic countries, Lu said.
In other respects, such as business, China and America share similarities, and China’s growing middle class has been agitating for reforms such as greater political freedoms and a cleaner environment.
“China has some problems,” Lu said. “They opened the economy and business. The politics is still a closed-door policy. But because of the business, they are introducing western ideas and democracy from the outside. They need people to know the American culture.”
