17 institutions in Florida hold CCNE accreditation for the Doctor of Nursing Practice. Published in-state graduate tuition among them starts at $5,467 a year, at Florida Atlantic University.
The score is a local one.Positions are worked out against the 15 scored institutions in Florida and not against the country, so a program near the top here sits somewhere else entirely on the national list.
2
In-state rates vary enormously here.Published annual in-state graduate tuition among the 15 Florida institutions that report one runs from $5,467 to $43,578, a 8-fold spread inside one state and one reporting year.
3
Mostly public, and that is a residency question.8 of the 15 institutions with federal figures are public, and a public in-state rate is a residents-only price, the private rates beside them apply to everyone.
4
Some are delivered at a distance.6 of the 15 carry the federal distance-education flag, which covers coursework and never the supervised practice hours.
Metro Guides Inside This State
Narrower than this page and organized around a commute rather than a
border. Each one counts a census metropolitan area, so it can cross a
state line where this page cannot.
Three published figures, weighted. Scores are relative to the
15 institutions on this page and to nothing
else.
50%
Published in-state graduate tuition
Institution-level. Average annual tuition for full-time graduate students, 2023-24, from IPEDS. Not a DNP per-credit rate, not including program differentials, and not net of aid.
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.
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.
The Best 15 DNP Programs In Florida, Ranked
Ordered on published in-state tuition, annual DNP conferrals and
institution-wide undergraduate completion, weighted for a state
page so cost leads. Scores are relative to the 15 institutions on this page and
not to the country, the same program carries a different
number on the national list. How this is built.
Every ranked institution in Florida, with what the federal record
publishes for it and how its score was composed.
UCF states its executive track precisely: 42 credit hours of online asynchronous instruction, two required virtual DNP intensives a year, and 1,000 post-baccalaureate clinical hours. It also admits the thing most online programs gloss: the DNP project itself requires in-person clinical hours, so fully remote it is not. There is deliberately no full-time option for the nurse executive track, because the college assumes those students are already working full-time, which tells you exactly who it is designed for: serving managers, not people stepping out of practice. The family and adult-gerontology acute care tracks run mixed-mode with reduced on-campus seat time, a middle setting between the executive track’s near-total flexibility and a conventional campus program. The family practitioner route runs 73 credits against the executive track’s 42, so the track page is what to compare on rather than the program page.
FSU is built for nurses who intend to keep working. Every track runs online, full or part-time, with only minimal on-campus skill practice and testing, though the college is candid that most courses carry a synchronous Zoom component, so evenings are not entirely yours. The executive health systems leadership track is fully online and part-time, and admits experienced nurses holding an MSN, a qualifying master’s, or in some cases a BSN. There is also a post-master’s route for acute care practitioners moving into adult-gerontology. One provision is unique here: a serving preceptor can claim a waiver of six credit hours for every 300 hours of precepting completed, which turns work you may already be doing into progress on the degree.
Florida runs two routes into the doctorate and gates them differently. The BSN-to-DNP is built around online coursework for nurses moving up from the bedside. The MSN-to-DNP is open only to applicants holding a master’s in nursing and an active Florida APRN license, and that condition settles the question for most people before anything else does: if you already practice in Florida as an APRN, that is your route, and if you don’t, you’re applying to the longer one. If cohort size and an established placement network matter to you, Gainesville’s conferral volume is the argument for it. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the middle third of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is about 2.5 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
USF attaches a geographic condition to the degree that decides it for a lot of applicants: a minimum of 31 credits including at least eight practicum credits and four project credits, all of which must be completed in Florida. If you do not live there, that decides it before anything else does. The plan is lock-step, so the sequence is fixed rather than assembled around your schedule, which is predictable if you want a known end date, inflexible if your work pattern shifts. Practicum hours directly support the DNP project and can include direct patient care or immersion experiences approved by the program director. Both entry routes are open, and the adult-gerontology acute care concentration evaluates prior clinical experience case by case rather than against a fixed threshold.
Florida Atlantic splits the DNP by entry credential. The full-time BSN-to-DNP prepares family, adult-gerontology primary care and psychiatric-mental health practitioners. The post-master’s route runs part-time over eight semesters for APRNs who are already certified, covering leadership, clinical scholarship, nursing theory, cultural competence, population health, strategic healthcare management and evaluation. A minimum of 1,000 clinical hours culminates in a project mapped to the 2021 AACN Essentials. Delivery is four separate choices rather than one: live on campus, synchronous over Zoom, fully asynchronous, or hybrid. That matters because most schools offer a single mode and call it flexible. Its college also charges a per-credit fee on nursing courses on top of tuition, so the published annual rate is not the whole bill.
FIU’s DNP leans psychiatric, and its practice sites make that plain: community mental health centers, crisis centers, psychiatric clinics and hospital units, correctional health, and private practice. Correctional health in particular is a setting few nursing schools name, and the placements you do are what you end up competent to handle afterwards. The provision worth knowing if you live anywhere else in Florida is that students in the online specialties may complete clinicals beyond the university’s own service area of Monroe, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. Several Florida publics hold their students inside a catchment. This one says in writing that it does not. Its college publishes a plan of study per specialty rather than one for the degree.
North Florida frames its DNP for nurses ready to move from clinical expertise into influence, with emphasis on evidence-based practice, organizational and systems leadership, health policy and quality improvement rather than on adding a clinical population. It is delivered fully online with faculty engagement built into each course, and the post-MSN track admits twice a year, autumn and spring. One change is worth planning around: from autumn 2026 the post-MSN route requires full-time enrollment at nine credit hours a term, closing the part-time option many working nurses rely on. Anyone weighing this program should confirm which cohort they would join, because the version described today and the version starting in 2026 ask for different things. Its nurse anesthesia track is accredited by the COA rather than CCNE, a separate accreditation claim from the rest of the degree.
Gulf Coast publishes four separate DNP curricula and the credit totals are nothing alike, so the number that matters is the one attached to your entry point. The BSN-to-DNP nurse practitioner route is 81 credits, full time or part time. If you already hold an MSN with an advanced practice focus, you finish in 36 credits over five full-time semesters. Nurse anesthesiology is a different proposition again: 112 credits across nine continuous full-time semesters, 36 months end to end, and it wants a full year of ICU experience behind you before classes start in the summer. CRNAs who already hold a master’s take a 37-credit version over six part-time semesters instead. Anesthesiology is also the one route with a standing campus commitment, once a week from that first summer through to graduation.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Jacksonville draws a sharp line between its two routes. Bachelor’s entry to family practice wants a 3.3 undergraduate nursing grade point average, which sits above the usual 3.0 floor, plus a year of professional nursing experience before clinical work begins. The post-master’s doctorate is the flexible one: fully online, with fall and spring starts, and the school states plainly that no campus visits are required. That last point is worth more than it sounds, because plenty of programs call themselves online and then schedule intensives you have to fly to. Your background check may be released to clinical agencies so they can approve your placement, which is routine but worth knowing before you consent to it.
Palm Beach Atlantic runs its doctorate as a single practitioner track, adult-gerontology primary care, and the point of that track is the credential waiting at the end. Finishing it makes you eligible to sit the national certification examination through either the American Nurses Credentialing Center or the American Association of Nurse Practitioners. Choosing a school with one track rather than six is a narrower decision than it looks, because the faculty and the clinical placements are all pointed at the same patient population instead of being split across several. The program carries no distance flag in its federal filing, so plan on being in West Palm Beach rather than at a distance.
Barry gates its post-master’s doctorate on certification rather than a transcript audit. You need a valid, current national certification in an advanced nursing practice specialty, and the school treats that certification as the evidence you have already met the minimum clinical hours for your specialty. That is a cleaner test than counting hours one by one, and it means an uncertified master’s holder is not eligible here however many hours they logged. Barry confers one of the larger numbers of nursing doctorates in the country, both outright and against its size, sitting in the top tenth on each. The program carries no distance flag federally, so plan on Miami.
Florida Southern runs its doctorate as a leadership degree rather than a clinical one, and says so plainly: healthcare policy and advocacy, finance, information systems, project management and organizational leadership. If you want a new patient population, this is not the program. If you want to run something, the coursework aims squarely at that. Everything is online, and the college charges out-of-state students the same rate as everyone else, which removes the residency penalty that shapes the arithmetic at most public universities. Project and practicum work is done against real problems inside healthcare organizations rather than as an academic exercise. It is a post-master’s program, so the clinical core is assumed to be behind you.
St. Thomas keeps its online DNP compact and regular: 13 core courses totaling 39 credits, with the residency built as three sequential practicum courses rather than one open-ended requirement. Each runs seven weeks and carries three credits, and together they are where the program’s required hours get completed. Nine of the 39 credits sit in that practicum sequence, so close to a quarter of the degree is residency rather than coursework. The seven-week course length is the part worth planning around, because it sets a rhythm you can hold a work roster against, and a stumble in one course costs you weeks rather than a whole semester.
Miami runs its family practitioner route so it can end in either a master’s or the doctorate, with eligibility for family practitioner certification either way, so how far you go is not locked in at admission. Beside the doctorate sit post-master’s certificates in adult-gerontology acute care, adult-gerontology primary care, family practice and oncology. The oncology certificate is the unusual one, because very few schools train advanced practice nurses specifically for cancer care, and it leads to a different job rather than a variation on the same one. The doctorate carries no distance flag in its federal filing, so plan on Coral Gables. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the highest tenth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and it is one rate whatever state you live in.
Tampa’s doctorate is one of the smallest on this site, conferring about one degree a year against an enrollment above eleven thousand, so this is a program running at the edge of viability rather than an established pipeline. That cuts both ways: individual attention is close to guaranteed, and a cohort barely exists. The program is filed federally as a distance program. One practical detail the university publishes is that doctoral students are not assessed the student service fee charged on summer sessions, a small saving but a real one if you study year-round.
These programs hold current CCNE
accreditation. They file their DNP
conferrals under a specialty classification rather than under
Nursing Practice, so the federal tuition and conferral figures
used above are not available for them and
they are not scored.
Keiser's doctorate is a post-master's degree for nurses already practicing as APRNs, and the school publishes the credit total broken into its parts rather than as one number: 36 graduate semester credits, of which at least 21 are core, four cover the DNP project course and carry 60 clinical hours, eight are practice clinical experience, plus one elective and a doctoral residency. The residency is the part to plan around, because it is not virtual. You spend two to four days at Keiser's flagship Florida campus. The electives let you angle the degree toward education, clinical practice or healthcare administration, which is a real choice rather than a listed option, so decide which before you enroll.
Nova Southeastern runs the doctorate from a bachelor's as a stacked degree, and it publishes the hour arithmetic that most schools bury. You complete more than 500 clinical hours in the master's portion and more than 500 again in the doctoral portion, so more than 1,000 in total, and the project sequence alone carries four courses of 150 practicum hours each. Coursework is online with one to three on-campus intensives depending on your concentration, plus virtual intensive days of one or two days during every project course. Two admission dates rather than one: NursingCAS closes August 1 for a fall start and December 1 for winter, which is unusually forgiving if you miss a cycle.
Choosing A DNP Program In Florida
What studying in Florida changes. The questions that apply wherever
you study are on the national ranking page.
Settle your residency before you compare anything else
Across the 8 public institutions in Florida publishing both rates, the out-of-state rate runs a median of 2.5 times the in-state one. At Florida Gulf Coast University the gap is $21,196 a year on its own. Residency is decided by the state under its own rules and a distance program does not confer it, so for an out-of-state applicant this one question is worth more than the difference between most of the programs on this page.
With 17 to read, cut on the track before you cut on the school
That is more institutions than anyone reads properly, and the cut that removes most of them is the population focus rather than the ranking. A university with a strong doctorate may not run the specialty you want, and a track can be closed to new applicants while the rest of the program keeps recruiting. Decide the specialty first, then read what is left. The ranking above orders what remains on published tuition, conferrals and completion.
The Florida board of nursing decides the license, not the diploma
No doctorate confers authority to practice or prescribe. That authority comes from an advanced practice license the state issues and the national certification behind it, which is why a DNP-prepared and a master's-prepared nurse practitioner on the same license prescribe the same things. What varies between states is the licensure requirement itself, so take it from the board rather than from a program page, and take it early: several programs want an active license in the state where your practicum will happen rather than wherever you hold one now, and licensure by endorsement runs to months. What the degree does and does not grant sets out the distinction.
The distance flag here records delivery, not your week
6 of the 15 measured institutions in Florida carry it. That flag records only that taught content can be delivered at a distance. It says nothing about campus days, and nothing about the supervised practice hours, which happen in a building with a preceptor present wherever you enroll. Ask for the number of on-campus days and the months they fall in, because that is what you hold against a roster. Online DNP programs ranks the distance-flagged field nationally.
The schools without figures are not the weaker ones
Keiser University and Nova Southeastern University file conferrals under a specialty classification rather than under Nursing Practice, so the federal columns this page ranks on do not exist for them. They carry the same CCNE accreditation as everything in the ranking above. A missing figure here is a filing convention rather than a verdict, and reading it as one would put a real option out of your reach for no reason. The notes beside those names come from the schools' own pages.
Nursys, the national
license verification system operated by the boards themselves
AANP places Florida in its restricted practice category,
which it defines this way: state law restricts the ability to engage in at least one element of practice, requiring supervision, delegation or team management by another health provider for the nurse practitioner to give patient care.
A degree confers no prescriptive authority. It comes from a state advanced practice license and the national certification behind it, so a DNP-prepared and a master’s-prepared nurse practitioner holding the same license prescribe the same things.
So the thing to settle here is the supervision requirement rather than
the diploma. Ask the board what supervision, delegation or team
management the statute requires, and ask an employer who provides it,
because in a restricted state that arrangement is a condition of working
at all rather than a formality.
Practice environment from AANP's Florida fact sheet, read 2026-09-08;
AANP last revised the classification 05/2026. It is AANP's reading of
state statute rather than a federal designation, and statutes move each legislative
session, so confirm it with the board before you rely on it.
Board details read from the NCSBN member directory on 2026-09-08.
Licensure requirements change by legislative session, so treat anything
you read here as a pointer to the board rather than a substitute for it.
What The Work Pays In Florida
BLS OEWS, May 2025. BLS classifies by occupation, not by credential: there is no DNP wage series, and every figure here covers everyone in the occupation regardless of which degree they hold.
Nurse practitioners in Florida have a median of $129,510, which ranks 36 of the 51 jurisdictions the survey publishes a median for, across about 21,790 people in the state.
That sits in the lower third of the jurisdictions the survey publishes, which is worth setting against local costs before reading it as a verdict.
A median is the midpoint of what people in the occupation are paid, so half
earn less and half earn more; it is not a starting salary and not an offer.
Every row is one federal series, ranked against every jurisdiction that
series covers. Nothing here is a job-board average. DNP salary sets out the
national picture.
Shortage Areas, And The Debt Relief Attached To Them
HRSA designated primary-care Health Professional Shortage Areas, read 2026-09-08.
Designated areas
234
Of those, rural
104
Median score
16
Highest score
24
Unusually, most of the designated shortage in Florida is not rural.
Only 104 of the 234 designations are, so the
approved site that qualifies you is as likely to be a city clinic as a
country one. A designation is a statement about how many primary-care providers
serve a defined area relative to its population. It describes supply,
not hiring.
The designations here differ widely in priority. The median scores 16 against a highest of 24, so which
approved site you join moves your funding position further than
anything about the state as a whole does.
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.
Whether a particular employer counts as an approved site is settled by
the program, not by the designation, so check the site before you take
the job rather than after. HRSA's shortage-area data portal
maps the designations. Paying for a DNP
covers the routes that do not depend on where you practice.
Studying From Outside Florida
6 of the 17 accredited doctorates in Florida 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 Florida this cycle, and whether it will place you for supervised clinical
hours near where you live.
What The Figures On This Page Are
Tuition is the institution's published annual graduate rate. It is
not a DNP per-credit price, it is not a total program cost, and
it is not what anyone pays after aid. A DNP taken part-time over
four years does not cost four times the annual figure, because
most programs bill by the credit.
DNP awards are conferrals in the reporting year at that
institution. The figure says a program is running and how much
of it is running; it does not say the program is better than a
smaller one, and the rubric stops rewarding volume above 25
conferrals for that reason.
Undergraduate completion is exactly that, the federal
150%-of-normal-time rate for first-time, full-time bachelor's
students at the institution. It is the weakest input in the model
and carries the smallest weight. No federal series reports DNP
completion, so nothing on this site claims one.
Of the 15 institutions with federal figures here,
8 are at public institutions. In-state tuition at a
public school is available only to residents; the out-of-state
rate is frequently two to four times higher and is the figure an
out-of-state applicant should be reading.
6 institutions here
are flagged by the federal survey as
offered at a distance. That flag records how the coursework is
delivered. It does not mean the clinical hours are remote, and
it does not mean a student never travels to campus.
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers specific to Florida. The degree-wide questions are answered on the guides.
How many DNP programs are there in Florida?
17, which is more than anyone reads properly. The cut that removes most of them is the specialty rather than the score: a strong institution may not run the track you want, and a track can be closed to new applicants while the rest of the school keeps recruiting.
How much does a DNP cost in Florida?
Published in-state rates run $5,467 to $43,578, a spread of about 8.0 times inside one state. At that width the ranking matters less than knowing which end you are looking at, and the cheap end is usually public and usually conditional on residency.
Is a DNP cheaper in Florida if you live there?
Sharply. Florida Gulf Coast University publishes $6,974 in state against $28,170 out of it, 4.0 times the rate, so residency is worth more here than the difference between most of the schools on this page. Ask the registrar what establishing it takes before you assume you can.
Can a nurse practitioner practice independently in Florida?
No. Florida is restricted practice in AANP's classification, its most constrained category: statute requires career-long supervision, delegation or team management by another provider. The doctorate changes nothing about that, because authority comes from the license and the statute behind it.
What do nurse practitioners earn in Florida?
A median of $129,510, within $2,790 of the national $132,300. Florida pays the going rate rather than a premium or a discount, which makes the other variables the deciding ones.
Does federal loan repayment apply in Florida?
It can. 234 designated primary-care shortage areas, 104 of them rural, so both kinds of site exist. Eligibility attaches to an approved site rather than to the jurisdiction, which makes it an employer question.
Can you study for a DNP online in Florida?
6 of the 15 measured institutions carry the flag. It covers taught content and nothing else, so the number to ask each school for is on-campus days and the months they fall in.
Sources
Two datasets produce every figure on this page, and the institutions those figures describe are listed under them. Nothing here is compiled from a school's own marketing material.
1CCNE Accredited Program Directory It decides which institutions appear on this page at all: the 17 in Florida below are the ones it lists as holding current accreditation for the Doctor of Nursing Practice.
2IPEDS Published tuition, annual conferrals, institutional completion and the distance-education flag.
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.
The Institutions Behind These Figures
Every institution the two datasets name in Florida, alphabetically.
A link is the web address that institution reports to the federal
directory, the school’s own site, not a page about the
doctorate.
Where this site has fetched a page on that site and confirmed
it contains the words “Doctor of Nursing Practice”,
that page is linked too and marked as confirmed; that is true of
8 of
17 here.
