When Universities Go Online: Employment Consequences of IT Master’s Program Adoption for Bachelor’s Graduates
Setareh Seraj, Shuting (Ada) Wang, Chengxin Cao & Yuxiao Luo · Job Market Paper — in preparation for submission to MIS Quarterly
More than half of U.S. graduate students now take at least one course online, and universities have raced to launch online IT master’s programs. This paper asks what that expansion means for the students already on campus: how does a university’s decision to open an online IT master’s program affect the employment outcomes of its own bachelor’s graduates? Drawing on signaling and brand-extension theory, we develop competing predictions — online expansion can dilute the institutional signal and crowd the entry-level market, or raise visibility and modernize the institution’s brand — and examine how institutional ranking and local labor-market conditions determine which force prevails.
Economic Volatility and the Dynamics of Online Reading Behavior
Setareh Seraj · Under review at Internet Research Journal
Conference presentations: CIST 2025 (Atlanta) · WISE 2025 (Nashville)
Using large-scale user-level data from an online reading platform, this study examines how economic volatility reshapes a digital behavior that demands sustained attention. When volatility spikes, users spend more time reading and shift toward educational rather than entertainment content, consistent with coping and self-improvement motives — yet their ability to stay focused declines, reflecting cognitive load and attentional strain. The findings position online reading platforms as coping tools during periods of economic uncertainty.
An Empirical Investigation of Green Brand Reputation Using Social Media
Setareh Seraj · Under review at Journal of Information Systems Applied Research and Analytics (JISARA)
Most brand-reputation measures rely on periodic surveys and miss the environmental dimension of reputation entirely. Building on green brand equity theory, this paper develops a real-time tracker that measures green brand image, green satisfaction, and green trust from social media text using theory-driven, expert-reviewed dictionaries. Applied to monthly Twitter data for firms in the Clean200 sustainability ranking, the tracker shows that stakeholder perception often diverges sharply from sustainability-revenue rankings — firms with high clean revenue, such as Apple and Tesla, are not necessarily perceived as green.
Earlier peer-reviewed publication
Seraj, S., Nikravan, M., Ramezanianpour, A. A., & Zendehdel, P. (2020). Evaluation of the application of municipal solid waste incinerator (MSWI) ash in civil engineering using a sustainability approach. Detritus, 9, 113–124. doi:10.31025/2611-4135/2020.13951