Allowance for conducting surveys

My projects includes conducting of surveys so printing of questionnaires into the hundreds are inevitable. Survey for my CNM project cost $25+ to conduct, so each of us have to pay about $5. Then my SS project cost $6 to print, so each of us have to pay about $2.

We pay hundreds each semester to get an education and projects are part of the modules. I don't see why we have to fork out the extra money to do all these. You can say that we can always choose simpler methods of distributing questionnaires, like sending them to friends through MSN where we don't have to print out the questionnaires. However, distributing questionnaires online simply aren't the same as doing them hardcopy-wise. In some cases, as for my CNM project, it is relatively easier for respondents to face a hardcopy rather than a softcopy one. Furthermore, there are modules that simply require getting respondents from the streets and getting a sample of a couple of hundreds is not uncommon. In my opinion, all modules which require students to do projects that involve surveys should give these students an allowance to cover the amount spent during the project. I don't believe that each faculty, department or NUS, for that matter, is so poor that they cannot help students cover the cost. C'mon, we're students. I get a majority of my allowance from my mom, for goodness sake! (FYI, I suck at giving tuition and the allowance I get from the shows I play in barely covers what I spend.)

It can be a fixed amount, like perhaps $10 for each group, or it can vary according to the needs of each group. It doesn't have to be fixed across all departments in a faculty, but should be flexible to suit the budget of both the various departments and faculties. I heard that one of the departments in FASS (is it Geography?) allows students in a particular module the right to claim up to $10 for miscellaneous stuff in their project or something like that.

So what if the amount received is not enough to cover the cost fully?
Firstly, the cost of conducting a survey should not be too high, I suppose, so the amount should cover the cost either fully or up to 90%. I'll use my CNM group's project as a guage. We printed 300 copies of questionnaires, double page, 3 sets of 7 to 8 pages of standard readings for the respondents multiply by 5 sets of that because there are 5 members in the group and each of us need the 3 sets, and 60 pieces of a set of general questions for 60 respondents. That's an equivalent of 862 pages. Using NUS's printing and photocopying services, which is cheaper than outside, we have a total cost of $26.40. I think the number of pages is quite a bit, and if such a number accumulated the above amount, then I think the standard cost of printing surveys in a majority of projects should be either around $25 or lesser. The latter seems more probable. Like I said, I'm just using my CNM project as a guage and subsequent statements are my interpretation. I don't know if usual cost goes higher than this or not, but I suspect it does not for a majority of cases, unless we're talking about experiments in Psychology or the such where they print tons of questionnaires. But then I suppose they'd have an allowance for that. I suppose. We were lucky to have 5 people in the group, what if there are lesser people? The cost would be higher for each person.

Secondly, if the amount goes really high and the faculty is unable to fork out the extra money (which is bullshit, in my opinion) on top of the basic to help cover costs, then at least part of the cost can be covered by that allowance while the remaining would have to be split evenly among the project-mates. It's still better than if there is no allowance.

Then there is the problem of what if these students want the money and fake the results of their surveys instead? Well, I don't suppose one can actually control what students want to do with the money, but in a way resorting to faking results in order to get that few dollars will surely compromise the experience they'd get if they actually go through the process of conducting the surveys. *shrugs* That's their choice.