Best DNP Programs

Iowa

Best DNP Programs In Iowa 2026

6 institutions in Iowa hold CCNE accreditation for the Doctor of Nursing Practice. Published in-state graduate tuition among them starts at $9,286 a year, at University of Iowa.
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Key Takeaways

  1. 1

    Iowa is a small field. Only 6 schools here carry enough published figures to be scored, so a position says how one compares to its in-state neighbors and nothing about how it compares nationally.

  2. 2

    In-state rates vary enormously here. Published annual in-state graduate tuition among the 6 Iowa institutions that report one runs from $9,286 to $39,878, a 4-fold spread inside one state and one reporting year.

  3. 3

    Mostly private institutions. 5 of the 6 institutions with federal figures are private, so most published rates here do not turn on residency, and private sticker prices are discounted more heavily than public ones.

  4. 4

    About half are delivered at a distance. 3 of the 6 carry the federal distance-education flag, which covers coursework and never the supervised practice hours.

How This Ranking Is Scored

Three published figures, weighted. Scores are relative to the 6 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, 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 6 institutions on this page and not to the country, the same program carries a different number on the national list. How this is built.

# Program In-state tuition DNP awards UG completion Score of 100
1 of 6 University of Iowa Iowa City, IA · Public · offered online $9,286 7 75% 87.1
2 of 6 Clarke University Dubuque, IA · Private nonprofit $39,550 11 56% 40
3 of 6 Allen College Waterloo, IA · Private nonprofit $22,624 3 Not published 33.2
4 of 6 Morningside University Sioux City, IA · Private nonprofit · offered online $38,017 7 50% 26.2
5 of 6 Mount Mercy University Cedar Rapids, IA · Private nonprofit $39,878 4 58% 12.7
6 of 6 Briar Cliff University Sioux City, IA · Private nonprofit · offered online $34,230 3 48% 9.2

The Best 6 DNP Programs In Iowa, Ranked

Every ranked institution in Iowa, with what the federal record publishes for it and how its score was composed.

Ranked 1 of 6

University of Iowa

Iowa City, IA

87.1 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Public
  • Doctorate (research)
  • Offered online

Iowa publishes its clinical load per semester rather than as one total, which is the number that actually tells you whether the degree fits around a job. Fall and spring each carry 180 clinical hours if you are in the adult-gerontology primary care, pediatric or family tracks, and 270 if you are in psychiatric mental health or adult-gerontology acute care. Summer flips it for family nurse practitioners: 270 there, against 180 for the others. So the family route runs lighter through the main terms and heavier in summer, while psychiatric and acute care carry half again as much all year. Map that against your roster before comparing programs on their total hours.

In-State Tuition
$9,286
Out-Of-State
$31,374
DNP Awards
7
UG Completion
75%

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 100
  • Established program 63.1
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 100

Visit University of Iowa →

Ranked 2 of 6

Clarke University

Dubuque, IA

40 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Private nonprofit
  • Doctorate (professional)

Clarke is a college of under a thousand students that turns out nursing doctorates at a rate in the top tenth of accredited institutions nationally, which tells you where its attention goes. Admission asks for no GRE and considers applicants individually, with preference for a cumulative and core grade point average of 3.0 or better across the bachelor’s and any master’s. The bridge route for master’s holders wants documentation of the clinical hours your master’s included, so dig that out before you apply. The Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education accredits the bachelor’s, the doctorate and the post-graduate advanced practice certificate here, so the whole ladder is covered rather than just the top of it.

In-State Tuition
$39,550
Out-Of-State
$39,550
DNP Awards
11
UG Completion
56%

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 1.1
  • Established program 100
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 29.6

Visit Clarke University →

Ranked 3 of 6

Allen College

Waterloo, IA

33.2 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Private nonprofit
  • Doctorate (other)

4 DNP tracks at this institution, Critical care, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general), Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.

Allen College publishes a credit total for every route, which makes the choice unusually easy to price. The registered nurse to doctorate route is 76 credits and carries four practitioner tracks: family, psychiatric mental health, adult-gerontology acute care and acute care pediatrics. Leadership in health care delivery and administration is 62 credits. The post-master’s systems leadership route is 33. That spread, from 33 to 76, is what your prior education is worth here in plain numbers. Bachelor’s entry starts twice a year, in fall and spring, and full-time and part-time options run with online delivery. The Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education accredits the bachelor’s, master’s, doctorate and post-graduate advanced practice certificate.

In-State Tuition
$22,624
Out-Of-State
$22,624
DNP Awards
3

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 56.4
  • Established program 0

Visit Allen College →

Ranked 4 of 6

Morningside University

Sioux City, IA

26.2 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Private nonprofit
  • Doctorate (other)
  • Offered online

Morningside builds a second chance into admission, which almost no school does in writing. If you are turned down on grade point average, you may still register for coursework, and after 10 graduate credit hours at 3.0 or better you can be admitted. That turns a hard floor into a demonstrable one. Three tracks run, direct patient care, transformative leadership and adult-gerontology acute care, and each is open from either a bachelor’s or a master’s. Everything is online. Licensure carries a geographic condition: your registered nurse license must be from Iowa or a compact state, and anything else needs the dean’s approval, so settle that before you apply. A new graduate can start while still obtaining licensure, for one semester.

In-State Tuition
$38,017
Out-Of-State
$38,017
DNP Awards
7
UG Completion
50%

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 6.1
  • Established program 63.1
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 7.4

Visit Morningside University →

Ranked 5 of 6

Mount Mercy University

Cedar Rapids, IA

12.7 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Private nonprofit
  • Doctorate (professional)

Mount Mercy sorts you by whether you already work as a nurse practitioner. If you do, the doctorate is 33 credits and about 12 months. If you hold a master’s in nursing without the practitioner credential, the family nurse practitioner route is 57 credits and about 24 months. Both run one class at a time in five and ten week blocks, which fits a nurse working full-time better than a conventional semester load does. Clinical work in the family practitioner sequence is one to one with a licensed preceptor, an advanced practice nurse, physician or physician assistant, rather than a group rotation. The nurse educator courses carry their own minimum of 100 clinical hours in a specialty you pick with faculty. It is a small university and the cohort matches.

In-State Tuition
$39,878
Out-Of-State
$39,878
DNP Awards
4
UG Completion
58%

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 0
  • Established program 20.3
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 37

Visit Mount Mercy University →

Ranked 6 of 6

Briar Cliff University

Sioux City, IA

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

Briar Cliff scopes its doctorate to nurses who are already certified practitioners and puts it at two years, online. This is a top-up rather than a route into practice, and the coursework says so: population health, informatics, financial management and ethics rather than another clinical population. The money side is where Briar Cliff does something different. It discounts tuition for employees of partner organizations on a sliding scale set by how many colleagues enroll alongside you, and takes 20 percent off online graduate tuition for active duty military. If your employer is on that partner list, ask before you apply anywhere else. Briar Cliff is small, and the doctoral cohort is small.

In-State Tuition
$34,230
Out-Of-State
$34,230
DNP Awards
3
UG Completion
48%

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 18.5
  • Established program 0
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 0

Visit Briar Cliff University →

Choosing A DNP Program In Iowa

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

What University of Iowa charges depends on where you live

It is the one public institution in Iowa publishing both rates, at $9,286 in state against $31,374 out of state, a difference of $22,088 a year. Residency is set by the state under its own rules rather than by where you sit to watch a lecture, so an out-of-state applicant should treat that gap as the first question rather than a footnote.

The Iowa 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.

Briar Cliff University, Morningside University and University of Iowa carry the distance flag

3 of the 6 measured institutions in Iowa 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.

Who Licenses You In Iowa

Practice environment, as AANP classifies it
Full Practice
Licensing body
Iowa board of nursing
Verify a license
Nursys, the national license verification system operated by the boards themselves

AANP places Iowa in its full practice category, which it defines this way: state law lets nurse practitioners evaluate patients, diagnose, order and interpret tests, and initiate and manage treatments including prescribing medications and controlled substances, under the exclusive licensure authority of the state board of nursing.

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 with the board is the licensure route itself: what it accepts as an equivalent program, which certification it recognizes for your track, and how long endorsement takes if you are licensed elsewhere. Endorsement runs to months, and it is the step people leave until after they have accepted a place.

Practice environment from AANP's Iowa 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 Iowa

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.

OccupationMedian, IowaEmployedRankNational median
Nurse practitioners29-1171$130,1603,24032 of 51$132,300
Nurse anesthetists29-1151$273,07038013 of 44$236,590
Registered nurses29-1141$78,63034,42048 of 51$97,550
Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary25-1072$77,36077038 of 51$80,250

Nurse practitioners in Iowa have a median of $130,160, which ranks 32 of the 51 jurisdictions the survey publishes a median for, across about 3,240 people in the state. That sits in the middle third of the jurisdictions the survey publishes a median for.

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
163
Of those, rural
142
Median score
14
Highest score
21

Designated shortage in Iowa is a rural matter almost entirely: 142 of the 163 designations are rural, about 87% of them. Debt relief and the shape of the work both point away from the population centers. A designation is a statement about how many primary-care providers serve a defined area relative to its population. It describes supply, not hiring.

Priority varies between them: a median score of 14 against a highest of 21. Worth asking what a specific site scores rather than assuming the state figure applies to it.

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 Iowa

3 of the 6 accredited doctorates in Iowa 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 Iowa 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 6 institutions with federal figures here, 1 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.

3 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 Iowa. The degree-wide questions are answered on the guides.

How many DNP programs are there in Iowa?

6 hold CCNE accreditation for the doctorate. A field this size is small enough to shortlist properly and large enough that the shortlist matters.

How much does a DNP cost in Iowa?

Published in-state rates run $9,286 to $39,878, a spread of about 4.3 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 Iowa if you live there?

Sharply. University of Iowa publishes $9,286 in state against $31,374 out of it, 3.4 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 Iowa?

AANP puts Iowa in its full practice category, the least restricted of the three: state law lets nurse practitioners evaluate, diagnose, order and interpret tests and prescribe under the board's own licensure authority. That is AANP reading the statute, not a federal designation, and legislation moves it.

What do nurse practitioners earn in Iowa?

A median of $130,160, within $2,140 of the national $132,300. Iowa 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 Iowa?

It can, and here it mostly means rural practice: 142 of the 163 designated primary-care shortage areas are rural. Eligibility follows an approved site rather than a state, so the question belongs to the employer.

Can you study for a DNP online in Iowa?

3 of the 6 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.

  1. 1 CCNE Accredited Program Directory It decides which institutions appear on this page at all: the 6 in Iowa below are the ones it lists as holding current accreditation for the Doctor of Nursing Practice.
  2. 2 IPEDS 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 Iowa, 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.

  1. 1

    Allen College

    Waterloo, IA · Private nonprofit · carries federal figures

  2. 2

    Briar Cliff University

    Sioux City, IA · Private nonprofit · carries federal figures

  3. 3

    Clarke University

    Dubuque, IA · Private nonprofit · carries federal figures

  4. 4

    Morningside University

    Sioux City, IA · Private nonprofit · carries federal figures

  5. 5

    Mount Mercy University

    Cedar Rapids, IA · Private nonprofit · carries federal figures

  6. 6

    University of Iowa

    Iowa City, IA · Public · carries federal figures

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