Learned being in favour of institute (8)
I believe the answer is:
profound
'learned' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'in favour of institute' is the wordplay.
'in favour of' becomes 'pro' (I've seen this before).
'institute' becomes 'found' ('found' can be a synonym of 'institute').
'pro'+'found'='PROFOUND'
'being' is the link.
(Other definitions for profound that I've seen before include "deeply intellectual" , "Extensive" , "Intellectually deep" , "showing great knowledge" , "anything but superficial" .)