In my four years at CSU East Bay, I have met some of the most inspiring, life-changing and encouraging professors who helped me grow as a writer, an individual, a citizen and a student.

I have also had teachers who, frankly, wasted my time and money.

My complaint does not lie in the material studied or the grade I received. Professors and lecturers are not often held accountable for their performance here which often leads to lackluster curricula and unengaged teachers who do not foster a desire to learn and explore or facilitate an intellectual gain.

From constantly decreasing the budget to a tenure system that locks in professors into the university system despite their actual performance and results in lecturers who are often not held accountable to student evaluations. It appears as if universities are not thinking about the ultimate goal their institutions were built for: producing intellectuals to lead our world.

The interests of America’s 19.7 million college students are not truly being served.

What students need is for their university to focus on keeping and rewarding teachers who produce quality results for their students, regardless of title, tenured status, credentials or who makes the most.

Off the tails of further budget cuts to education, a $9.2 billion deficit in California, and with teachers’ salaries being further decreased as each academic year passes by, it’s clear the state of California is not budgeting for the future.

Our universities need to restructure the way teachers are compensated, and need to reward their most effective teachers.

The bottom line is that students pay for poor-performing teachers while many talented and motivated teachers, lecturers or assistant professors are not rewarded enough.

One CSUEB associate professor, who wished to remain anonymous, disclosed that in her experience she has been given the option to filter through her student teacher evaluations to choose which ones she would like to keep in her permanent file for that quarter, if any.

What is the point of students evaluating teachers at all, if in many cases they are ignored?

This university must hold teachers accountable to the same performance standards as they do to students. Universities need to capitalize on their most effective teachers and those who maintain an excellent learning environment in their classrooms.

What we should demand from our university and our teachers is quality above all else, and a system, which truly evaluates teacher on performance, not on credentials and contracts.

A system that calls for distinguishing teacher compensation based on how effective that teacher is could produce teachers truly worthy of both the university’s time and money, amidst the growing conversation about whether or not the value of a college education has diminished through the years.

Good teachers can create change and give students fire for knowledge and intellectual development.

The National Education Association released a report in 2011 that called for a better structure to public education by “acknowledging effective teachers as instructional leaders helps to attract and retain strong, well-prepared professionals.”

Good teachers do not get paid enough, and that is truly unfortunate.

The average salary for lecturers at CSUEB comes out to roughly $20 an hour, according to Sacramento Bee’s data. A bartender can easily make double that in tips in one hour.

At the end of the day, there’s no easy way to make sure every teacher at a university is worthy of student’s time and money.

Teaching is one of the most important professions in the world. A good teacher can change our world for the better, but retaining teachers who do the opposite and produce nothing of substance on behalf of the university can have the opposite result.