Science, principally, reportedly grabs students (8)
I believe the answer is:
scholars
'students' is the definition.
('scholar' can be a synonym of 'student')
'science principally reportedly grabs' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'science' could be 'sc' and 'sc' is located in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for scholars that I've seen before include "Learned people, especially in the humanities" , "Learned people who have studied long" , "Cross Hal mixed with pupils" , "Pupils or learned people" , "Very learned persons" .)