You're designing a database for a university. How would you apply normalization techniques to ensure efficient data storage and retrieval, considering the various entities involved such as students, courses, and instructors?

Normalization involves breaking down data into multiple tables and using relationships like foreign keys to link them together. This ensures data is not duplicated, reduces redundancy, and allows for efficient querying and data retrieval. Storing all information in one table would lead to data redundancy and inefficiency. Using multiple databases or denormalization would not adhere to normalization principles.