By Duncan Mansfield

KNOXVILLE — A lean budget and tuition increases loom at the University of Tennessee.

The UT Board of Trustees face those prospects in Knoxville this afternoon as they wrestle with the ripple effects of a $55 million cut in higher education to offset a $468 million state budget deficit.

The trustees will set next year’s budget. It will contain a 6 percent tuition increase for in-state undergraduates, the same as last year, and no pay raises for UT President John Petersen, campus chancellors and vice presidents.

Decisions on where to make $21 million in cuts from the five-campus, 42,000-student UT system were postponed until October to give campus administrators time to consult their faculty and staff.

Key among the proposed cuts is elimination of the nationally ranked speech and hearing department at the main Knoxville campus.