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Thank you! Some research needed indeed but all done
Great help- thanks again!

Great, glad you got it all sorted.

That was an interesting expedition. I'm pretty confident I've got to the right destination, but still have a residual niggle, that 15 across seems to have no definition. I initially took its first word, plus a missing letter, as the definition, despite the rubric's saying they occcurred only in the wordplay. But then I find the same missing letter, occurring very similarly, in the wordplay of 29 down. So how to construe 15 across? It's not a double definition. The obvious country has plenty of universities.

Hi lemming, you were correct in thinking the definition is the first word. It’s a straight clue, not one of the missing letter ones.

Definition is the first word; no missing letters

Lemming, the first word of 15a is the definition. As in “ten pounds a head”

Thanks each. Quisling, your example -- "Miles an hour" might be an even better one -- was a sort of epiphany for me. I don't recall ever before having thought of "a(n)" and "per" as synonymous.

I'll be pondering its type of synonymy, but I don't doubt there are some contexts in which "Xs a(n) Y" and "Xs per Y" will convey the same meaning, the "a" and the "per" being effectively interchangeable. And that seems quite good enough for crosswording purposes.