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The pressure is on. As academics reveal the extent of their overwhelming obligations, and a study shows that successful academics must possess a “superhero” ability to multitask, it’s clear that all areas of academics’ personal and professional life suffer under this pressure.

So what of their students, who rely on their lecturers and, fairly or not, expect attention and support, irrespective of the other jobs that their teachers are managing?

It might seem like all the deadlines to apply to a top university in the United States are clustered at the beginning of February, but fortunately, it’s not too late to get in an application.

Many leading colleges you may not have heard of continue to accept applications on a rolling basis, and others set their deadlines between March and September 2016.

“Asking students who should pay for their education is like asking shoppers who should pay for what they’ve just bought,” commented one professional when I started asking students for their opinions about university funding.

But this analogy, which places a fee-paying student in a simple customer or consumer role, cannot be quite right.

What small universities lack in sheer size of their student body, they certainly make up for in the pride and passion of their students. 

After the Times Higher Education announced the top 20 world's best universities 2016, students, staff and alumni sent in their own experiences and reasons why they love being at a tiny institution.

There are two fundamental questions every prospective international student needs to ask themselves: Where would I want to study? And what language do I want to study in?

If the answer to the latter question is “English”, then your quest to find the right location just got that much easier.

A new visualisation tool, compiled by StudyPortals, has mapped the location of every English taught degree at the top 1,000 universities in the world.

Despite the hours students and their lecturers spend together, there’s a disparity in how much each knows about what the other thinks.

Students have their chance to formally evaluate classes, just in case their feelings weren’t flashing across their faces throughout the lectures. But, coursework grades aside, students don’t tend to have access to the inner thoughts of their university teachers.

In April 2013, Ellie Wood dropped out of her undergraduate degree at the University of Liverpool, just seven months after starting.

In this time, she’d been forced to take on crippling debt just to afford university housing and the other expenses that come with living in a big city. Ultimately, the cost was too much to bear.

Saudi Arabia has triumphed in a snapshot ranking released on Thursday: the top universities in the Arab world.

Three of the top five universities were in Saudi Arabia, while Morocco and Egypt also secured three spots each in the top 15.

The ranking is an initial release before consultation with the sector to determine how best to evaluate the region.

See the Times Higher Education World’s Best Small Universities 2016 table here.

One question has been playing on my mind for the past few weeks: does size matter to students?

I’m thinking, of course, about whether the number of students enrolled at a university has a significant impact on the student experience. Does it affect the quality of their academic experience for better or worse? Does it make any difference to their social lives and personal development?