Frostburg State University’s 260-acre main campus in Western Maryland sits in the Appalachian highlands, its rolling green quads framed by a backdrop of a picturesque American college town.

But there’s also another campus, more than 7,000 miles away, where students can still graduate with a Frostburg State degree.

It’s in China, at Hunan University of Technology and Business, where there are hundreds of college students enrolled every year in pursuit of an American degree.

Despite rising geopolitical tensions between the United States and China, Frostburg State is working to expand by growing its existing program and looking to collaborate with a second Chinese college.

Frostburg State officials laud the international push as moneymaking, which could help the regional university recover from declining enrollment and state cuts that have led to a multimillion-dollar deficit and recent layoffs.

“It started off as an exchange program and has turned into an entrepreneurial initiative,” Frostburg State’s interim president, Darlene Brannigan Smith, said in an interview last week.

Until recently, Frostburg State was barred from enrolling any more than 30% of its freshman class from out of state. But its parent, the University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents, voted last month to release that cap for the next five years, allowing the university to increase the number of students to an unlimited number, including those enrolled at any Chinese partner.

More than half of Frostburg State’s out-of-state students today are in China. As a group, the Chinese program with more than 500 students is 15% of Frostburg State’s total student body.

So far, Brannigan Smith said, Frostburg State leaders have not faced any resistance about its program or possible expansion plans from either China or the United States, though “nothing is ever really smooth sailing.”

Sudhir Singh, the dean of Frostburg State’s College of Business, Engineering, Computing & Analytics helps oversee the program and credited the partnership’s success in part to Hunan University’s “very politically connected” leadership in China. This helps the program “run like a well-oiled machine,” he said.

The eastward expansion comes as Frostburg State has suffered enrollment declines over the last decade, according to publicly available data. In the last 10 years, the total number of undergraduate and graduate students has shrunk by 27%, to 4,104 from 5,645.

Last year, the university faced a $7.7 million deficit, which prompted leaders to eliminate teaching positions, close buildings and cut funding for athletics. Last month, the university announced that it was facing an additional $4.43 million in losses amid state budget cuts. That in part led to more cuts, laying off eight employees and cutting another eight open positions.

The partnership with Hunan University nets about $1 million a year for Frostburg State, Brannigan Smith said.

“We know that this program could end at any time, so we don’t want to be reliant on it in terms of our operating budget,” she said.

Instead, leadership at Frostburg State spends the money on one-time investments. The profits this year paid for new equipment for chemistry labs and faculty research.

Bolstering partnership with international institutions could be an increasing part of the future of American higher education, said John Haupt, director of operations at the Gateway International Group, which consults on international education.

“There was an idea that students would keep coming to the United States to be educated forever,” Haupt said.

But with the Trump administration revoking visas and threatening to deport students, the joint ventures in China could be a smart business move for American universities.

“You don’t have to worry about visa delays if the students you’re educating aren’t coming to the United States,” he said.

Undergraduate students studying at Frostburg State’s China campus can pursue a Bachelor of Science in economics or a Bachelor of Arts in fine arts, all while staying in Changsha, where Hunan University is located. The arts program was opened two years ago after the success of the business degree, said Singh.

Some other American universities award degrees on foreign campuses. New York University has a satellite campus in Abu Dhabi, for example. There’s also Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, which serves as a branch campus of the Pittsburgh university.

But those programs are still fully through NYU and Carnegie Mellon rather than a partner institution like Frostburg State’s partnership with Hunan University.

With a population of over 10 million, Changsha is widely known as the place where Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, studied and lived before joining the Chinese Communist Party. The university has over 19,000 students, educating thousands more yearly than Frostburg State.

For the first two years, students are taught by Hunan University, enrolling in English language courses. The students are taught by Frostburg State professors for their final two years. Occasionally, students choose to study abroad at the university’s Maryland campus for a semester or a year.

Ultimately, Brannigan Smith said, the students graduate with two degrees: one from the Chinese university, and one from Frostburg State. Most graduate without ever stepping foot on the Maryland campus.

They often go on to earn graduate degrees at American universities like NYU, Johns Hopkins and Duke, according to Brannigan Smith.

At times, the connections between American universities and China have received scrutiny. Earlier this year, a congressional committee ordered the University of Maryland, College Park to turn over data about Chinese national students, citing concerns about espionage. The state’s flagship university used to have a program to educate Chinese Communist Party leaders, but it ended in 2021.

The Frostburg State faculty that teach at the Chinese university are usually adjunct professors hired specifically to teach in China, Brannigan Smith said. Sometimes faculty from the Maryland campus visit to teach a six-week intensive course.

But, she insisted, that does not dull the quality of the education that the Chinese students are receiving.

“We have monthly meetings with our Chinese counterparts, and it’s really a well oiled machine,” Brannigan Smith said. “It promotes mutual understanding and cultural exchange.”

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.