At a latitude of nearly 70 degrees North, the University of Tromsø (UiT) is the world's northernmost university. UiT is a relatively small university, with around 6000 students and around 1800 staff. As with Norway's other universities, UiT's main tasks are research, education and conveying of information. The university's physical location provides a major advantage for research and accademic studies connected with the Arctic and other regions of the north. The polar and Arctic regions are important to many subjects. However, there is also considerable focus on the global perspective and comparitive studies between north and south. UiT may be relatively small, but the number of subjects offered is expansive. The university covers a wide variety of subjects and its students have more than 100 study programmes to choose between.