Find individual very disheartened by competition involving a number of universities (3,6)
I believe the answer is:
ivy league
'a number of universities' is the definition.
'ivy league' can be an answer for 'universities' (I've seen this before). I am unsure of the 'a number of' bit.
'find individual very disheartened by competition' is the wordplay.
'find' is an anagram indicator.
'individual' becomes 'i' (Roman numeral for one, ie individual).
'disheartened' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters) (the middle or heart is removed).
'by' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'competition' becomes 'league' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'very' with its middle removed is 'vy'.
'i' put after 'vy' is 'vyi'.
'vyi' anagrammed gives 'ivy'.
'ivy'+'league'='IVY LEAGUE'
'involving' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for ivy league that I've seen before include "Top US universities" , "Prestigious group of US universities" , "academic grouping" , "Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton and Yale" , "Group of US universities of high prestige" .)