Best DNP Programs

Birmingham metro

Best DNP Programs In Birmingham 2026

Two accredited institutions that conferred 187 doctorates between them, and one of the two accounts for 178 of those.
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Key Takeaways

  1. 1

    Every one of the 2 is inside the city itself. This guide counts the Birmingham, AL metropolitan area, which reaches further than the city, but no accredited institution in it sits outside Birmingham. So the metro definition costs you nothing here and the commute is the city's, not the region's.

  2. 2

    1 public, 1 private, and the cheap end is public. University of Alabama at Birmingham publishes $9,048 in-state, against $39,000 at the next option up. Residency is the lever here, and that figure is one school's published year rather than a typical cost: it leaves out fees, insurance and what reaching a clinical placement costs.

  3. 3

    University of Alabama at Birmingham is most of this metro. It conferred 178 of the 187 DNP awards recorded here, which is 95% of them, against 9 at Samford University. Treat the others as genuinely small programs rather than as alternatives of a similar size.

  4. 4

    1 of 2 reach you at a distance. That many carry the federal distance-education flag, which covers taught content and never the supervised practice hours. Ask for the number of on-campus days and the months they fall in.

The Bigger Producer Runs One Track And The Smaller One Runs Five

The University of Alabama at Birmingham conferred 178 DNP awards in the reporting year and Samford University conferred 9. That is a ratio of nearly twenty to one, and it is the most lopsided pair of any two-institution metro on this site.

The track counts run the other way. Samford files five distinct DNP tracks in the federal survey and UAB files one. So the school producing the overwhelming majority of this metro’s doctorates offers the narrower choice of what to study, and the school producing the small remainder offers the wider one. If a specific population focus is what you are after, the smaller program is the one more likely to have it.

Price separates them again, by a factor of four: UAB publishes $9,048 in-state and Samford publishes $39,000. Read together, this metro asks a reader to choose between a large, inexpensive, single-track public program and a small, expensive, multi-track private one. Few metros put the question that starkly.

How This Ranking Is Scored

Three published figures, weighted. Scores are relative to the 2 institutions on this page and to nothing else.

  1. 50%

    Published in-state graduate tuition

    Institution-level. Published annual graduate tuition, not a DNP per-credit rate and not net of aid.

  2. 35%

    Established program

    Program-level. DNP conferrals in this CIP and award level in the reporting year, saturating at 25. Above that a program scores full marks and gains nothing further for size.

  3. 15%

    Institution-wide undergraduate completion

    Institution-level and undergraduate. The IPEDS 150%-of-normal-time rate for first-time, full-time bachelor's students.

Nothing is imputed. A program that does not publish a figure is scored on the ones it does publish, with the remaining weights renormalized; below 2 published figures it is listed without a position rather than ranked on a single number. Accreditation is a condition of appearing at all, not a factor that earns points. What the rubric cannot see.

Accredited Schools In The Birmingham Metro, Ranked

Ordered on the same three published figures the state guides use: in-state tuition, annual conferrals and completion rate. One row per institution, not per federal filing.

# Program In-state tuition DNP awards UG completion Score of 100
1 of 2 University of Alabama at Birmingham Birmingham, AL · Public $9,048 178 64% 85
2 of 2 Samford University Birmingham, AL · Private nonprofit · offered online $39,000 9 77% 15

What This Guide Counts As The Birmingham Metro

This guide follows the Birmingham, AL metropolitan statistical area. Both institutions report Birmingham itself as their city, so the municipality list and the city limits are the same thing here. Tuscaloosa is a separate metropolitan area and the University of Alabama there is not in this list.

Municipalities Included

  • Birmingham, AL

Deliberately Not Included

  • Montevallo and Homewood, AL Inside the metro and carrying no institution in the accredited dataset. Nothing is being left out here; there is nothing there to leave out.
  • Tuscaloosa, AL Its own metropolitan area about an hour southwest, and the University of Alabama sits in it rather than in this one.
  • Jacksonville, AL Jacksonville State University is in Alabama, not in the Florida metro of the same name. It is in neither guide, because it sits in the Anniston-Oxford area.

The Best 2 DNP Programs In Birmingham, Ranked

Every scored institution above, with what it publishes and what it does not.

Ranked 1 of 2

University of Alabama at Birmingham

Birmingham, AL

85 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Public
  • Doctorate (professional)

Birmingham confers 178 nursing doctorates a year, which puts it seventh out of the 311 accredited institutions on this site. Scale matters here in a practical way: a program that size runs its courses when the catalog says it will, and the faculty teach at doctoral level as their job rather than as an overload. Teaching happens alongside the university’s own academic medical center, so clinical exposure runs from pediatrics through geriatrics and includes level one trauma care without students being sent to a partner hospital across town. The doctorate carries no distance flag in its federal filing, so plan on Birmingham. In-state tuition sits in the lower quarter of the programs on this site.

In-State Tuition
$9,048
Out-Of-State
$22,512
DNP Awards
178
UG Completion
64%

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 100
  • Established program 100
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 0

Visit University of Alabama at Birmingham →

Ranked 2 of 2

Samford University

Birmingham, AL

15 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Private nonprofit
  • Doctorate (professional)
  • Offered online

5 DNP tracks at this institution, Emergency and trauma, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing administration, Nursing practice (general), Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.

Samford files six separate DNP records federally, covering nurse anesthesia, family practice, psychiatric mental health, emergency and trauma, nursing administration and a general track. That much specialty breadth is unusual for a private university of about 6,000 students, and it puts Samford in the top tenth of accredited institutions both for the number of nursing doctorates it confers and for how many it confers against its size. The nurse anesthesia program is accredited by the Council on Accreditation of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Programs, and the next review is scheduled for spring 2035, which is settled well past the length of any program you would start now. The nurse leader track pairs online coursework with practicum blocks you attend in person.

In-State Tuition
$39,000
Out-Of-State
$39,000
DNP Awards
9
UG Completion
77%

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 0
  • Established program 0
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 100

Visit Samford University →

Choosing A DNP Program In Birmingham

What studying in the Birmingham metro changes. The questions that apply wherever you study are on the national ranking page.

Samford University and University of Alabama at Birmingham are the whole of the field in Birmingham

Samford University and University of Alabama at Birmingham file their conferrals under a specialty classification rather than under Nursing Practice, so the credit total, the entry routes and the clinical hour requirement live on their own pages rather than in the federal columns this page ranks on. Ask them who arranges clinical placements, and take the licensure question to the Alabama board of nursing rather than to the school.

Who Licenses You In The Birmingham Metro

Practice environment from AANP’s own state fact sheets, read 2026-09-08; AANP last revised the classification 05/2026. Boards from the NCSBN member directory, read 2026-09-08.

Alabama
Reduced Practice
Alabama Board of Nursing

Every institution on this page sits in Alabama, so one board licenses all of them and AANP classifies the jurisdiction as reduced practice. The school does not grant practice authority and never has; the license and the certification behind it do.

The board detail, the full AANP definition and the license verification route are on the state guide: DNP programs in Alabama . AANP is reading state statute rather than issuing a federal designation, and statutes move each legislative session, so confirm with the board before you rely on it.

Shortage Areas, And The Debt Relief Attached To Them

HRSA designated primary-care Health Professional Shortage Areas, read 2026-09-08. These are state counts, not metro ones.

Alabama, designated areas
109
Alabama, of those rural
75

These figures cover Alabama in full rather than the Birmingham metro specifically. HRSA publishes designations at the level of the individual area, and rolling them into a metro needs a county crosswalk this guide does not hold, so the state count is what is shown and it is shown as a state count. What follows from it still applies here, because eligibility never attached to a jurisdiction in the first place.

Both federal loan repayment routes open to advanced practice nurses require working at an approved site inside a designated area, and the area’s score sets funding priority when applications outrun the money: Nurse Corps Loan Repayment Program and NHSC Loan Repayment Program. HPSA primary-care scores run 0-25; funding priority for loan repayment follows the score.

In a metro that is mostly urban the practical consequence is that eligible sites are a smaller share of the employers you are likely to interview with than the state count suggests, and they are usually federally qualified health centers, public hospital systems and university clinics rather than private practices. Whether a particular employer counts is settled by the program rather than by the designation, so check the site before you take the job.

HRSA’s shortage-area data portal maps the designations to the address. Paying for a DNP covers the routes that do not depend on where you practice, and the state guide breaks the designations down further: Alabama.

Studying From Outside The Birmingham Metro

1 of the 2 accredited doctorates in the Birmingham metro carry the federal distance-education flag, which leaves most of the local field expecting you in the room and makes an out-of-state program a real comparison rather than a fallback. Either way it turns on one thing this site cannot answer for you.

Authority to enroll a distance student is set per institution and per state, and the federal flag this page counts records delivery rather than permission, so only the school can answer it. Ask two things before tuition enters the conversation: whether the program can enroll a resident of the Birmingham metro this cycle, and whether it will place you for supervised clinical hours near where you live.

Which Birmingham Option Fits Your Situation

Each of these routes to a published figure or a named institution. None is a recommendation, and none is a statement about whether a school will admit you.

If the published price is what decides it: University of Alabama at Birmingham

The lowest published in-state rate among Birmingham's publics, at $9,048 a year. An annual rate, not a program total, and it assumes residency.

If you are moving to Birmingham: settle residency before you apply

University of Alabama at Birmingham publishes a $13,464 annual gap between its in-state and out-of-state rates, the widest of the 1 Birmingham public publishing both. Start with the registrar, not admissions.

If you already hold an advanced practice credential: Samford University

Samford University publishes a post-master's route, the shorter way in when your master's already carries supervised hours. Ask how many transfer; the ceilings differ sharply.

If you cannot relocate: Samford University

Samford University carries the federal distance-education flag. The flag covers taught content only. Supervised hours still happen near you, and campus days are the school's to set, so ask for the count and the months.

What The Figures On This Page Are

Tuition is the institution’s published annual graduate rate, not a per-credit price and not a program total. Awards are conferrals in the reporting year. Completion is the federal undergraduate rate, the weakest input in the model, and no federal series reports DNP completion. Wages are the metropolitan cut of the federal survey, a different survey area from the state one. How this site scores programs sets out each input and its weight in full.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many DNP programs are there in Birmingham?

2 institutions in the Birmingham metro hold CCNE accreditation for the Doctor of Nursing Practice. This guide counts the Birmingham, AL metropolitan statistical area rather than the city limits, so the figure includes institutions in 1 municipalities.

What counts as the Birmingham metro on this page?

The Birmingham, AL metropolitan statistical area. In practice that means these municipalities: Birmingham, AL. Places deliberately left out are listed on this page with the reason.

Is it cheaper to study for a DNP in Birmingham than online?

Neither is reliably cheaper. Published in-state tuition at a public institution is usually the lowest figure available to someone who qualifies for it, and distance programs charge a single rate to everyone regardless of where they live. Which comes out lower depends entirely on whether you hold in-state status somewhere, so compare the published rates rather than the format.

Do these figures include fees and clinical costs?

No. Every tuition figure on this page is the published rate an institution reports to the federal government, which excludes fees, health insurance, textbooks and the travel a clinical placement can require. Treat it as a floor for comparison between institutions rather than a total cost of attendance.

Related Pages

Sources

  1. 1 CCNE Directory Of Accredited Programs Which institutions hold accreditation.
  2. 2 IPEDS Published tuition, conferrals and completion.
  3. 3 Metro Definition The Birmingham, AL metropolitan statistical area, rolled up to the municipalities listed above. Institutions are matched on city and state.

Every federal figure on this site is read from the administering agency’s own page, never from a secondary aggregator, and the reading date is recorded beside it.

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