Long time lurker, my first post so please excuse if I don't get the etiquette/details right!
Am an academic myself and work at a Big State U. My 2 cents:
1. I would strongly suggest opting for 403b over pension. If your DW is going to get a strong income (high-5/low-6 figures) OR there is income growth possible during tenure-track/after tenure, I would suggest going for the 403b option instead of pension. In fact, in almost any situation I would recommend going for 403b over pension. We "think" that academia is the best profession (it is BTW ;-) and we will never want to retire but based on my limited experience this feeling is not very stable (for a variety of reasons). Plus, if your DW is a rookie, there is a great likelihood that the academic Kool-Aid pumped into her during her studies is still strong when she asserts that she will be working 'forever' ;-). Trust me, as time goes by the ancillary demands of the profession, due to service/teaching obligations dull the 'fun' inherent in the job a bit. In addition to all of this, there are the tenure-related uncertainties to be considered especially if you are early career faculty on tenure-track. You'd want a retirement saving account that is 'portable'. Going with a 403b (esp. if TIAA is the custodian makes it extremely portable - pretty much any other university she goes to will have TIAA). If she quits academia, she can let it run as is OR roll it over into a 401/IRA.
Further, based on some of my senior (and not so senior) colleagues' experience what I have seen is that a pension only serves to bring in and reinforce a 'trapped' feeling. So ironically, a pension seems to increase the feeling of disenchantment/disengagement which gets accentuated in mid- to late career stages. My recommendation: go with 403b. I can't comment on the social security contribution/availability-in-later-life angle very much...personally I'm VERY happy to have avoided the pension (even though it is probably one of the best pensions out there in the country).
2. If you do indeed go with 403b, I think the simultaneous availability of 457b and 403b is one of the few perks of university employment that is vastly underrated. I would STRONGLY recommend maxing out both. I still deeply regret not maxing out my 457b for quite some time (more on account of sheer ignorance - didn't even know about it until fairly recently). Maxing BOTH accounts significantly reduces tax outflow and as a consequence, helps you keep more of your salary money with you (albeit partly in inaccessible accounts - more about the 'relative inaccessibility' below).
3. As a corollary to #2 above, if income NOT STRONG, I would suggest that first your DW puts in enough in the 403b to ensure max university match. Once that is done, max out the 457 - this is because 457 money is accessible to you even before 59.5 years age without that pesky 10% penalty that 403b/401k suffers from. Thereafter, do everything you can to max out 403b. After that, open up Roth IRA for you and DW and max those two suckers.
4. Operationally speaking, university bureaucracies 'do' the retirement contributions on a "$-per-paycheck" or "percentage-of-paycheck" basis. I've always selected a high $ amount or a high % (or both). For instance, currently I've picked 50% for my 457b and about 25% of paycheck for 403b. Why? This has the effect of 'front-loading' my contributions - the money is 'working' longer --> more capital appreciation, more dividends (reinvested, naturally). To be honest, I didn't think this smartly when I did it actually :-).....I did because I'm lazy and the university folks take care of ensuring that I don't cross 18k! So that saves me the trouble of monitoring this stuff :-).
Hope this is helpful...and congratulations on the new job, new city and new life! Have fun!
