Yep. The beneficiary of this ranking update, for those who take it seriously, is a place where the same comprehensively educated kid that disgustingly and outrageously get a place at Oxford with three As after also passing additional selection hurdles in the form of an entrance exam, a special application form that certain schools are very good at teaching their kids how to pass, and an interview with a probably privately-educated Oxford don gets an offer of 3 Bs based on the vanilla UCAS application, and might well get in if they miss out if the course isn't oversubscribed, especially if they have a good story about going to a bad school.

Also, nobody thinks gaming a teaching quality survey ranking (something traditionally focused on more by much less academically selective universities) to jump up the Times list means that Durham is on average outputting more elite students