Best DNP Programs

Houston metro

Best DNP Programs In Houston 2026

Five accredited institutions and four of them public, which makes this the most public-dominated metro on this site and puts Texas residency at the center of the decision.
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Key Takeaways

  1. 1

    5 accredited institutions, drawn from 3 municipalities. This guide counts the Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX metropolitan area rather than the city limits, so the pool is wider than the city name suggests and every campus in it is inside one commute.

  2. 2

    4 public, 1 private, and the cheap end is public. Prairie View A&M University publishes $5,191 in-state, against $6,171 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

    Output is concentrated in one school. University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston conferred 44 of the 82 DNP awards recorded across this metro, with University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston next at 24. A number that lopsided says where the cohorts and the placement relationships are, which a ranking position does not.

  4. 4

    1 of 5 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.

Four Of Five Are Public, So Residency Decides More Here Than The School Does

School-wide average graduate tuition in this metro, which excludes DNP add-on charges, runs from $5,191 a year in state at Prairie View A&M University to $20,934 at University of St. Thomas (TX), about 4 times apart, in the 2023-24 federal figures.

The four public institutions publish $5,191 to $8,927 in state, and the one private institution publishes $20,934. Out of state, the public rates rise to $13,977 to $33,701.

University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston conferred the most DNPs in the metro in the reporting year, 44, and sits between the two ends of the price range.

These are average tuition figures for full-time graduate students across each institution, not a DNP price. Some doctoral programs add a tuition differential on top, so ask each school for its DNP rate per credit before comparing.

How This Ranking Is Scored

Three published figures, weighted. Scores are relative to the 5 institutions on this page and to nothing else.

  1. 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.

  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.

The Best 5 DNP Programs In Houston, 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.

Each card shows what the institution publishes.

Ranked 1 of 5

The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston

Galveston, TX

95.7 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Public
  • Professional practice doctorate
  • Offered online

UTMB draws a hard line between its routes. The BSN-to-DNP nurse anesthesia program is 112 credit hours over an intensive 36 months, which is roughly triple a post-master’s load and the honest price of becoming a CRNA. The executive leadership track works on a different clock: national certification, whether NEA-BC, NE-BC, CNML or CENP, must already be complete before the first practicum course begins, so it is a doctorate for nurses who have finished credentialing, not one that credentials you. Practitioner tracks let you build hours in acute settings, outpatient settings or both. Most post-master’s students accumulate their remaining 500 hours through the scholarly project rather than direct patient care.

Tuition
$6,171
In-state
Tuition
$13,977
Out-of-state
DNP Awards
24
About the tuition figures
School-wide graduate average, 2023-24. Excludes DNP add-on charges.

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 93.8
  • Established program 98.5

Visit The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston →

Ranked 2 of 5

The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

Houston, TX

86 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Public
  • Professional practice doctorate

2 DNP tracks at this institution, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.

Cizik School of Nursing sorts applicants by who they already are. The post-master’s tracks are written for practicing nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists, and for nurses moving into leadership rather than deeper into clinical work. The BSN-to-DNP routes are described as built for nurses who are still working, and the adult-gerontology acute care track within them prepares you to be the provider for adolescents and adults with complex illness. That is hospital medicine rather than primary care. If you are choosing between a leadership doctorate and an advanced practice one, this is a school that keeps the two visibly separate rather than folding leadership coursework into a clinical track and calling it both.

Tuition
$8,927
In-state
Tuition
$33,701
Out-of-state
DNP Awards
44
About the tuition figures
School-wide graduate average, 2023-24. Excludes DNP add-on charges.

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 76.3
  • Established program 100

Visit The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston →

Ranked 3 of 5

Prairie View A&M University

Prairie View, TX

68.9 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Public
  • Professional practice doctorate

Prairie View is a historically Black university whose college of nursing publishes its outcomes rather than keeping them internal: employment a year after graduation, first-attempt licensure pass rates, and on-time completion, each reported by cohort year. Schools that publish completion rates alongside pass rates are giving you the harder number as well as the flattering one. A doctoral student here was selected as a Jonas Scholar for 2024 to 2026, which is a national award for nurses working on projects in priority areas. The doctorate is accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education and carries no distance flag federally. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the cheapest tenth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is about 3 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.

Tuition
$5,191
In-state
Tuition
$14,353
Out-of-state
DNP Awards
7
Completion
43%
Undergraduate
About the tuition figures
School-wide graduate average, 2023-24. Excludes DNP add-on charges.

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 100
  • Established program 54
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 0

Visit Prairie View A&M University →

Ranked 4 of 5

University of Houston

Houston, TX

68.6 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Public
  • Professional practice doctorate

Houston caps what you can carry forward, and the number is worth checking before you compare it with anywhere else. The maximum clinical hours it will accept from an MSN is 500, whatever you actually logged. So if your master’s carried 700 or 800 practicum hours, two or three hundred of them stop counting the moment you enroll here, and the post-master’s DNP still runs 37 to 42 credit hours over eight semesters. Against a school that applies your full master’s total against the 1,000, that is a real difference in time rather than a technicality. Eight semesters is the published shape whichever end of the credit range you land on.

Tuition
$8,723
In-state
Tuition
$18,083
Out-of-state
DNP Awards
6
Completion
65%
Undergraduate
About the tuition figures
School-wide graduate average, 2023-24. Excludes DNP add-on charges.

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 77.6
  • Established program 48.8
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 84.6

Visit University of Houston →

Ranked 5 of 5

University of St Thomas

Houston, TX

15 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Private nonprofit
  • Professional practice doctorate

St Thomas has the smallest doctoral output of any institution on this site, conferring about one degree a year, so treat this as a program to ask direct questions about rather than one with an established cohort behind it. The graduate ladder beneath it is more developed: a master’s with four concentrations, and a post-master’s psychiatric mental health certificate for advanced practice nurses that leads to eligibility for national certification in that specialty. The doctorate carries no distance flag in its federal filing, so plan on Houston. The university says it has taught nursing in the city for more than a century.

Tuition
$20,934
In-state
Tuition
$20,934
Out-of-state
DNP Awards
1
Completion
69%
Undergraduate
About the tuition figures
School-wide graduate average, 2023-24. Excludes DNP add-on charges.

Scored on

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

Visit University of St Thomas →

What This Guide Counts As The Houston Metro

This guide follows the Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands metropolitan statistical area, which includes Galveston County to the south-east and Waller County to the north-west. Three of the five institutions are in Houston itself, with the medical branch in Galveston about an hour down the coast and Prairie View A&M University an hour in the other direction.

Municipalities Included

  • Houston, TX
  • Galveston, TX
  • Prairie View, TX

Deliberately Not Included

  • Fort Worth, Arlington, Denton and Richardson, TX The Dallas-Fort Worth metro, four hours north, and the subject of its own guide.
  • Austin and San Antonio, TX Separate metros with their own accredited institutions.
  • Beaumont, TX A separate metropolitan area east of Houston.

Choosing A DNP Program In Houston

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

Settle your residency before you compare anything else

Across the 4 public institutions in the Houston metro publishing both rates, the out-of-state rate runs a median of 2.8 times the in-state one. At The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston the gap is $24,774 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.

The Texas 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 University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston carries the distance flag

1 of the 5 measured institutions in the Houston metro 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.

A metro is a commute, and Texas is the field

This page covers the institutions inside the Houston area because a campus you can reach on a weekday is a different proposition from one you cannot. It is a narrower field than the one you are actually choosing from: DNP programs in Texas carries every accredited institution in the state, and for a program you would attend at a distance the metro boundary means nothing at all.

Who Licenses You In The Houston 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.

Texas
Restricted Practice
Texas Board of Nursing

Every institution on this page sits in Texas, so one board licenses all of them and AANP classifies the jurisdiction as restricted 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 Texas . 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.

What The Work Pays In The Houston Metro

BLS OEWS, May 2025, metropolitan area cut for Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX, read 2026-09-09. 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.

OccupationMedian, Houston metroEmployedNational median
Nurse practitioners29-1171$134,5605,970$132,300
Nurse anesthetists29-1151$275,310680$236,590
Registered nurses29-1141$99,83065,910$97,550
Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary25-1072$103,0101,580$80,250

Nurse practitioners in the Houston metro have a median of $134,560, across about 5,970 of them, which is within $2,260 of the national $132,300.

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. The metropolitan cut is a different survey area from the state one, so these figures will not reconcile with the state page and are not meant to. How BLS defines these areas .

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.

Texas, designated areas
402
Texas, of those rural
264

These figures cover Texas in full rather than the Houston 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: Texas.

Studying From Outside The Houston Metro

1 of the 5 accredited doctorates in the Houston 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 Houston metro this cycle, and whether it will place you for supervised clinical hours near where you live.

Which Houston 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: Prairie View A&M University

The lowest published in-state rate among Houston's publics, at $5,191 a year. An annual rate, not a program total, and it assumes residency.

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

The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston publishes a $24,774 annual gap between its in-state and out-of-state rates, the widest of the 4 Houston publics publishing both. Start with the registrar, not admissions.

If you hold a bachelor's: University of Houston states that route

University of Houston's own pages name a bachelor's entry. Others in Houston may take bachelor's entrants too: this site records a route only where the school states it, so an absent name means unread rather than closed.

If you already hold an advanced practice credential: University of Houston

University of Houston 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: The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston

The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston 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 Houston?

5 institutions in the Houston metro hold CCNE accreditation for the Doctor of Nursing Practice. This guide counts the Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX metropolitan statistical area rather than the city limits, so the figure includes institutions in 3 municipalities.

What counts as the Houston metro on this page?

The Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX metropolitan statistical area. In practice that means these municipalities: Houston, TX; Galveston, TX; Prairie View, TX. Places deliberately left out are listed on this page with the reason.

Is it cheaper to study for a DNP in Houston 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 Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX 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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