Provincial university beginning to tackle dishonesty (8)

I believe the answer is:

outlying

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'provincial' is the definition.
Both the answer and definition are adjectives. Maybe you can see an association between them that I don't see?

'university beginning to tackle dishonesty' is the wordplay.
'university' becomes 'ou'.
'beginning to' says to take the initial letters.
'dishonesty' becomes 'lying' (lying is being dishonest).
The first letter of 'tackle' is 't'.
'ou'+'t'+'lying'='OUTLYING'

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for outlying that I've seen before include "Away from the middle" , "On the exterior" , "Remote from the centre" , "remote area" .)

I've seen this clue in The Times.

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