Wife and I are both recovering academics, both in hard sciences at a major research university. I finished about 5 years ago and ran from further involvement with universities. Wife finished 8 years ago and did 2 short post-docs before following suit. Would agree with all advice in this thread except Aggiemike's. Not saying he's wrong, just sounds like he's one of the few it's worked out well for.
Don't trust a word from tenured professors. I only ever met one that would give advice to students that was framed on their best interests. It was never what you wanted to hear but was usually right, and she was a bit of a pariah in her department. Half of them will even acknowledge that their advice on career and future outlook is garbage when pushed hard on the realities of the situation. As mentioned, they have heavy interest to recruit you and keep you excited. If you know anything about their day-to-day, it's not hard to see why the snake oil is so important.
Other things to consider when listening to these people...
Many of them got made when the climate was a lot easier. You need to try and research what the grant cycles and demographics (not race) of the field were like 20..30..40, maybe even 50 years ago in some cases. 20 years ago, Fed was raining money on NIH. If you were wrapping up PhD or getting into post doc In the mid-90s, the world was your oyster for the next 5-10 years. Not so much 5-10 years later. 30-40 years ago, the number of students and availability of departments weren't as out of proportion as they are now, and your advisor might actually be willing and/or able to help you get a job somewhere.
Also, the expectations for publishable results were way lower than today. Nobody likes to admit that the bar was lower when they had to do it, but unless we're takin about some Lasker/Nobel award type of work, it almost always was (and will continue to be in the future). Consider if these are the backdrop of the professor's formative experiences. They will likely advise you through this lens, and say things like "it's cyclical". It isn't, and this is not the environment you will grow in today. I've not had much experience with these kinds of people in which they are willing to put themselves in your shoes and see how damaging the realities of today's academia can be on the long term career of a young person.
Don't be fooled by the insistence that there are jobs waiting outside of academia if you don't want to be a professor, because there aren't. I don't know her field, but I can tell you that this kind of nonsense was always fostered as a fair assumption with regards to biopharma and "alternative careers". There are jobs in that sector, but the vast majority aren't for you. It's almost as bad breaking in as it is to seek professsorships, and most people either have complete caeer changes or take jobs that never required and usually don't want a PhD. You should research whether this is the same for her field. If there are private sector jobs, where are they, how common, what do they pay, does she really need a PhD or will it actually hurt her? She'll probably be overqualified to go back to what she's doing now. Don't assume that a PhD means she'll earn more. Assume it means she'll earn less, because she'll be desperate and have no negotiatiable position. Probably won't sniff $80k again for 10 years or more.
If your looking for advice about becoming a professor, avoid tenured advisors. Find the young people that are 3 years in to their first professorships and try to get them to paint an accurate picture about the day-to-day. They probably love what they do (or the idea of what they do) but that's the only thing keeping them from cracking under the stress and regret. 3 years in, they probably are drying up on startup money and running into snags on how they'll keep the ship together. Competition for grants is fierce, departments only care about the overhead they can take, grad students suck and professional researchers/technicians cost too much, equipment and supplies costs are a problem, and your gateway to publication lies in the hands of reviewers that are actually your competitors. It's all the stress and frustration of running you're own small business, with none of the upside if you happen to be successful. Hell, you aren't even creating real jobs for people, so the altruistic benefits of building a business are missing too. This is the job your wife has to look forward to. Not the rosy picture painted by tenured professors (who probably won't tell you about their own frustrations with having to be 60-80% administrators).
Regarding your career, how flexible is location? Are there areas you need to be in or can you find work anywhere? As pointed out above, hers won't be flexible at all. Chances are high that the forward progress requires working at some podunk regional college, likely not located in an area with a diverse and robust economy. No way to know how long you'll be there either, so laying down roots for small town living is a risk.
I'd evaluate the whole thing the same way as a major investment, asking what the return expected is and the time frame. Even if your out of pocket costs are zero, you need to assume a hard value on the opportunity cost. If your wife is making $80k now, assume 10 years before that happens again, or have realistic conservative estimations on the timeframe to get there again. Cap out at mid-career projections for her field and adjust for inflation. How long until you recoup the cost of lost income during that window, and does she really love it that much? Don't forget to model impact to your own career. And remember, children change all parameters of the equation. If the impact is great enough, trust and believe that you will regret not having the best stable financial footing and flexibility in careers that you could have had if/when they arrive. That multiplies if the academic route isn't every bit as personally fulfilling as she hopes.
Sorry for my negative outlook on this and long post. It's fair to say that I'm pretty bitter about my academic experiences. I've always felt that I have to make up for lost time that could have been avoided with the right advice or less naive perspective. Wife isn't as bad, but I've slowly watch her opinion get closer over the years as well. It's also echoed by a lot of my classmates and peers, so I don't think I'm an anomaly.
What is different about my opinion, however, is that I foster a lot of hostility around the idea that the academiic/university system lures some very bright and hardworking young people away from the private sector and frequently returns them busted down and used up with little to show for it. Grad school can mess with your mind. Most of my peers would be doing wonderful today and probably would have made loads of value addition to private R&D if they'd not got caught up in academia and just started out in biopharma after undergrad. Instead, they are either approaching 2nd postdocs or still desparately trying to convince employers, who claim they can't find good and qualified candidates, to even look their way. There were times that I started to seriously question whether I was even cut out to manage a convenience store, much less a research program. It's taken years to restore confidence and gain recognition from colleagues that I can, in fact, run a research program.
A lot of people enjoy academia, or claim to at least, but I think they are the minority. You shouldn't **** on her dreams, but do what you can to make sure that the two of you walked into this with clear eyes and realistic expectations. The outcome may be good or bad, but know that pursuing a PhD will permanently alter your careers and once it's done there's no going back.
