I think alternating between teaching and working in the industry is a good way to stay balanced and keep the gap small. The tech lead on my team was a college

I think alternating between teaching and working in the industry is a good way to stay balanced and keep the gap small. The tech lead on my team was a college professor for a while before joining us, and he occasionally got in spats with one of the other more senior folks on our team, which could be oversimplified to "correct vs pragmatic". However, they also respected each other and always resolved it amicably in the end. A couple of times I thanked them both for working through it and pointed out that I think we end up with significantly better software as a result, even if getting there was difficult. I learned a lot from both of them.