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In short, How does one go about hiring a professor or someone really well established in their field for a private tutoring session?

I tried looking online but can’t find much, mainly websites for tutors that are practitioners or “experts” as in with with n years of experience at best. This doesn’t cut it at my level as I am a researcher with a PhD and already have published papers on my topic.

However, I am very passionate about my subject and always looking to grow. So I do have questions, very technical (in my case computer science) and would happily pay a fee for consulting with a professor in the field.

Any advice?

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    What exactly do you want them to do for you? As it stands, your question is unclear.
    – Thomas Steinke
    Commented Feb 4, 2020 at 22:38
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    If you really mean to "hire a high-level consultant", you'd need to offer them something substantial. If it's just consultation with no share in anything subsequently, you'd pay "consultant's fees", which might be 500 USD per hour, or worse. Is this what you mean?
    – paul garrett
    Commented Feb 4, 2020 at 22:39
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    Discuss ideas, mostly technicalities and soundness. Brainstorming...
    – AnarKi
    Commented Feb 4, 2020 at 22:39
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    Ok, still, "discussing ideas, technicalities, soundness, brainstorming" is not something I myself would agree to do without very considerable motivation/incentive. I suggest that you realize that many senior/established people already have lots of ideas... have super-facility with technicalities... have no problems with "soundness"... and have "brainstormed" for many decades. Seriously, what would you have to offer? Experienced/senior/old people have seen many things... Very often inexperienced people simply fail to imagine what old people have seen... don't fall prey to that fallacy.
    – paul garrett
    Commented Feb 5, 2020 at 0:40
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    Find a StackExchange forum and post your questions there. I'm sure some expert readers will respond to you.
    – Prof. Santa Claus
    Commented Feb 5, 2020 at 2:16

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Unless you are in a place where professors are greatly underpaid and generally abused, this seems like a quest that is bound to fail. People are busy and they aren't normally driven by money (other than large pots of grant money).

What I think you want, instead, is a collaboration. That can be started with just an email, provided that you have something to contribute yourself. This requires you to do a bit of research to find someone with common interests to form a two-way partnership.

Perhaps the story of Srinivasa Ramanujan and his relationship with Hardy will be instructive.

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Write to them and ask. There's no other way about it. They might be willing to talk to you, or they might direct you to someone who can (since you did say it's technical).

Sabine Hossenfelder's "Talk to a Scientist" is the only initiative I'm aware of where the scientist publicly sells his or her time. As far as I'm aware it's aimed at members of the general public (as opposed to PhD-level researchers), but they only say they don't solve homework problems and don't review written material, so presumably they would also be willing to talk to PhD-level researchers. The rate is US$50 for 20 minutes. However, they don't cover computer science.

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The price for this service is a cup of coffee and generous flattery. An introduction from a common friend wouldn't hurt, but you can get away without one.

How you do it is this;

  1. Find a paper that is close to the topic you want to ask about.
  2. Find out where the author of that paper works.
  3. Plan a day trip (during the working week) to the city nearest that institute, say city X.
  4. Write an email to the author that goes like this;

Dear Prof Coolperson,

I really enjoyed reading your paper on Y. As it happens, I'm going to be in the city of X some time next week. This is a bit cheeky of me, but is there any chance I could meet you for coffee? I can come out to the University. I'd be thrilled to chat with you about Y.

Many thanks, AnarKi

They might say "no, sorry, too busy", but I've had this strategy work more often than not. I have never had specific questions I wanted answered, but it's fun to meet people you admire.

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