Page 70 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg
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68 CHAPTER 3
responsibility to deal with these hindrances is placed with the candidate.
In contrast to university policies, interview and focus group respondents revealed some reservations towards hiring foreign applicants, showing resistance towards university policy. The main reservations regarded English and Dutch language proficiency. Focus group respondents questioned the fit of foreign applicants in the department and doubted if the level of English in application letters corresponds with applicants’ spoken English. The data show that they make assumptions about candidates’ level of English, which can put candidates of certain nationalities at more
of a disadvantage than others, leading to potential inequality regarding nationality. An interview respondent addressed an issue encountered with a foreign
applicant regarding her command of Dutch:
Moreover, this was someone from abroad who was teaching in Dutch and that is something that students cannot always deal with. Having an accent and the fact that you lose some finesse in another language than your mother tongue, to students is a sign that it is not good. (SSH, 1, F)
This committee member explains that Dutch-speaking foreign candidates can have a disadvantage, because Dutch students tend to evaluate them less favourably than native Dutch speakers. In the case illustrated by the respondent, these low evaluations hampered the candidate’s job application. In practice, teaching in the local language (Dutch) is constructed as problematic for both foreign assistant professors and (local) students. The dimension of spoken language is not recognised by Van Note Chism (2006) as a factor leading to teaching excellence, yet this study shows that committee members take this into account when making selection decisions. The data have revealed that despite the university’s aim to increase the percentage of foreign staff, committee members perceive risks in hiring foreign applicants. This illustrates how foreign applicants can be excluded from the selection process, an inequality that surfaces at the micro-level. Unlike the findings at the meso-university level, the results at the micro-level show that internationalisation and excellence are not necessarily always intertwined.
Excellence
Natural sciences. The committee members in the Natural Sciences department
did not refer to excellence, as the university and department policies do, but they used the rhetoric of quality. This study finds that research quality is considered the most decisive criterion in the selection of assistant professors. However, when respondents

























































































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