Do professionals keep in contact with their professors?

No. Not unless they are willing to pay them.

@zenvelo What is the going rate for answers?

@talljasperman It doesn’t work that way. You hire a professor on a consultation basis to help solve a problem or to analyze a situation. We’ve hired some academics to do some studies on our business, and it runs into many tens of thousands of dollars.

It’s not a pay as you go fluther; it’s not ten dollars a question.

Some keep in contact. Many connect using LinkedIn but no, they don’t ask questions. It’s about networking not continuing their education.

Not normally, but occasionally there are exceptions and a friendship develops.

Then the result could be a wonderful book like “Tuesdays With Morrie” by Mitch Albom.

(Morrie Schwartz had been Mitch Albom’s Sociology professor and he was in the later stages of ALS when Mitch began flying cross country to visit him once a week to chronicle his ideas and philosophy of life during this difficult time in his life.

This was a very special relationship which resulted in an extraordinary book.

I highly recommend it. I think you’d enjoy reading it.

Probably at about the same rate as college kids keep in touch with their former teachers. Or employees with former employers.

We keep in touch with our mentors. We keep in touch with our idols, in order to encourage them. We touch base with the people that made a difference, but perhaps didn’t know it.

Finally, we only keep in touch with any of our instructors if we feel like we’re a success, by and large.

Sometimes. Of course, any professional will have had a lot of different professors, and will not stay in touch with all of them. But if that person remains in academia, then some of those professors (if working in the same field) will become colleagues, and they will read each other’s work and see each other at conferences.

Reference letters often also lead to a continued relationship, because the former student will have to keep in touch and send updates for the referee.