Excluding love, university can start to grate (8)
I believe the answer is:
omitting
'excluding' is the definition.
('omit' can be a synonym of 'exclude')
'love university can start to grate' is the wordplay.
'love' becomes 'o' (In tennis, 'love' means 'zero').
'university' becomes 'mit' (I've seen this in other clues**).
'can' becomes 'tin' ('tin' can be a synonym of 'can').
'start to' suggests taking the first letters.
The first letter of 'grate' is 'g'.
'o'+'mit'+'tin'+'g'='OMITTING'
(Other definitions for omitting that I've seen before include "Dropping" , "Leaving our or undone" , "skipping" .)