This article presents a critical evaluation of the growing popularity of online social surveys for the exploration of attitudes and behaviours within higher educational institutions. More specifically this article addresses a number of key issues: the construction of representative online samples, and the presentation of the results from an institutional census constructed from an online survey with a low response rate. The improper use of statistical significance tests, and the reporting of systematic errors when quota sampling is employed in surveys is also discussed. This study compares and evaluates four recent academic surveys: (a) the Czech wave of the EUROSTUDENT IV survey fielded by SC&C, (b) A Research Survey on Academic Staff at Czech Colleges and Universities undertaken by SC&C in 2009, (c) surveys of students and (d) employees at Palacky University Olomouc undertaken by the newly established Laboratory of Social Research. This article shows that an improper interpretation of online surveys resulted in a missrepresention of the views of university students and academic staff on the state of Czech higher education and opinions concerning different tertiary education reform measures.