[rdtwo]

The paywall can be bypassed by just going to the library or enrollment in a single class. You could probably even buy/rent a students account and use that for remote login.

The latter though you really have to figure out if that’s worth doing unpaid labor for. Seems like you could leverage your existing industry position to network with professors better then you could as a phd student. You could reach out to professors of interest and offer to mentor their phd student in the ways of industry or help them find jobs and use that as leverage to get access to folks you are interested in