wow - you sound just like me five years ago! heres what i learned, through my experiences.

i was a 3rd year senior in big 4 tax. i have great communication skills and love to teach. my father is a retired accounting prof, and his life/ free time was enviable. i decided to apply to the best phd program in the country in accounting. they only let in 2 people into their program that year (neither of which was me). i scored well over 700 on my GMAT. my application was impressive enough, however, to warrant a phone call from the doctoral program offering me a seat in their master's program, just to get my foot in the door and see if i liked the accounting phd program. i was also generously offered a research assistanceship. once i was at the school, i quickly realized that a phd in accounting has virtually nothing to do with accounting. it is basically very high level math, econometrics, and statistics that you use to build realistic computer models that shift through financial data. when i expressed my qualms about the quant heavy bent of the department, my advisor basically was like, yeah, it would help if you had a degree in math or stats - the accounting stuff is easy and we can teach you that.

if you can handle 4-5 years of intense and lonely work with math and computers, however, you will come out with a fab job. the starting salaries of recent grads from the school i was at was in the mid $200,000 range. they earned every penny of that, though, as far as i'm concerned. the work is painful.

needless to say i did not go back to the phd program, and left with a conciliatory masters degree and 40K in debt. if i could do it again, i think i would get my JD and teach that route. i think you can be a tax law prof that way, and actually deal with accounting (not crazy math). hope that helps, and good luck.

also, one final word... being a prof is not easy. my dad went through hell to get tenure, and had to publish constantly. it looks like you get all these breaks, but if you relax during that time you basically get relegated to the "instructor" heap. also, if you go through a tenure process and dont make it, apparently your career is shot.

I have thought of going that same route as well. I wonder if there are any graduate programs that allow students to work full time (and earn a salary on the admin side) and take the required graduate courses?

That way you are avoiding that 40k in debt.