Resources
Data And Sources
Two datasets sit behind every ranking on this site, and they disagree with each other. This page says by how much, and why that disagreement is a fact about US higher-education reporting rather than a defect in either source.
Resources
How This Site Is Built
The rest of this page is the data provenance: the two sources behind every ranking, how they were joined, and how many records the join could not match.
The Two Sources
Accreditation comes from the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education's own directory. It is the roster: if CCNE does not list a program, this site does not rank it, because accreditation is what allows a graduate to sit certification exams and is therefore pass-or-fail rather than a factor to score.
Tuition, conferrals and completion come from the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, under the classification code for Nursing Practice. It is the metrics layer, joined onto the accreditation roster.
The order matters. Building the roster from the federal side instead would drop four states entirely.
The Join, In Numbers
| CCNE-accredited institutions offering a DNP | 394 |
| Federal doctoral programs in the Nursing Practice code | 517 |
| Joined to an accredited institution | 439 |
| on an exact name match | 395 |
| on a curated, hand-checked alias | 37 |
| on an approximate name match | 7 |
| Federal programs with no CCNE record | 78 |
| Accredited institutions with no federal record | 83 |
Checked: 517 federal program records against 394 accredited institutions. Match rate 85%. Dataset generated 2026-08-24.
Why 83 Accredited Institutions Carry No Figures
Because an institution can file its DNP conferrals under a specialty classification, family nurse practitioner, psychiatric and mental health nurse practitioner, rather than under Nursing Practice. Those programs are accredited, running and entirely real. They are simply invisible to a query against the Nursing Practice code.
This is not a long tail of obscure schools. Johns Hopkins, Yale, Georgetown, Northeastern and Purdue all sit in that gap. They appear in the directory and on their state pages, listed without scores, because scoring them would mean inventing figures for them.
83 institutions are affected. Four states, Alaska, Maine, Montana and Vermont, have accredited DNP programs and no federally classified ones at all.
What We Will Not Publish
A total program cost. The federal survey publishes an annual institutional graduate rate. DNPs are billed per credit and most students study part-time, so multiplying an annual rate by a duration produces a number that looks authoritative and is invented.
A DNP salary. Federal wage data classifies by occupation and never by credential. No published series reports what DNP holders earn, so no page here claims one.
A single count of DNP programs. Three defensible counts exist, 394 accredited institutions, 517 federal program records, 439 joined, and they measure different things. Any page quoting one says which.
Sources In Full
- CCNE accredited program directory Accreditation status. Retrieved 2026-08-24.
- IPEDS Tuition, conferrals, completion. Classification 51.3818, Nursing Practice. Retrieved 2026-08-24.
- AACN, Frequently Asked Questions: DNP Programs & CCNE Accreditation, Q9 The 1,000 post-baccalaureate practice-hour expectation. Retrieved 2026-08-24.
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics Wages, by occupation. Never by credential.