A close cousin of this topic would be the background of new full professors in major universities. Ph.D. is risky, especially considering the slim chance of get

A close cousin of this topic would be the background of new full professors in major universities. Ph.D. is risky, especially considering the slim chance of getting the full professorship and its tremendous opportunity cost. The competition to become a full professor in a major institution is fierce and also it takes longer and longer as the competition heats up. The path is quite comparable to that of the unicorn founders in many ways. I'd wonder how much study has been done around the socioeconomic backgrounds of those prominent professors. I'd also be interested how those backgrounds have been shifted as time goes by. It would be also interesting if not much research has been done about it when some of them are supposed to do such a thing.