One of the problems with trying to survey the climate for students

Some folks may remember that about ten years ago--before the blog, and back when Blackwell had set up an e-mail "update service" for the PGR--I tried to start surveying student opinion about the climate (for women, for men, for students in general, all were fair game) in their graduate programs.  The results were not helpful:  on the one hand, we got feedback from a lone complainer, and no one else, from many programs; on the other, some departments mobilized their students to write en masse with gushing praise.  I don't see a way around this, absent substantial funding for investigators to go department-by-department to collect information and do detailed interviews and scrutiny of departments.  The recent "Climate for Women" fiasco in the SPEP/SAAP Guide to Philosophy Programs just confirms the point.  The remaining alternative, of course, is the one I have long urged (and reiterate annually), namely, that students have to visit and talk to current students at the programs they are considering.   Whereas most active philosophers have moderately well-informed views about the quality of work done by other philosophers (such that a survey aggregating their opinions about faculty quality can produce useful results), most faculty and students do not have such views about the "climate" for students elsewhere.  There is no substitute, at least at present, for prospective students doing the hard work of investigating the programs they are considering for themselves.