I don’t think many people place much stock in these rankings, and if they don’t have “shocking” moves then how are they gonna sell papers and get people to click!?!

An article on the site says “Durham wins University of the Year and dismisses Oxbridge reject stereotype.”

Not to be cold, but willing to bet that a good chunk of the Durham student population are those that were passed over by Oxbridge.

I’d be willing to bet the number of students that pick a UK university over Oxbridge in the next year will round to 0%. The times rankings mean nothing at this granularity (whereas being top 20 vs top 100 _is_ significant)

When I was a student you would buy a book which had overall rankings, per subject rankings, and descriptions of all the ranked universities. I assume the book is what they are trying to sell rather than the papers and you want the latest edition to have up-to-date information about the universities. I’m not sure shuffling the rankings to sell papers makes that much sense but maybe the economics are different today.

Now Durham has everything to lose... While Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial will live on regardless...

That's the price of fighting for a stupid prize.