Best DNP Programs

Knoxville metro

Best DNP Programs In Knoxville 2026

Two accredited institutions within $4,890 of each other on published tuition, and one of the two is for-profit.
A gold mirrored sphere on a slender tower rising above trees in autumn color, with low buildings and a river valley behind
On this page

Key Takeaways

  1. 1

    Price will not narrow this list. The published in-state rates here sit inside a band of roughly 1.4 times, which is tight for a metro. That pushes the decision onto track, cohort size and who arranges the clinical placement.

  2. 2

    1 public, 1 private, and the cheap end is public. University of Tennessee, Knoxville publishes $11,560 in-state, against $16,450 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 Tennessee, Knoxville is most of this metro. It conferred 61 of the 67 DNP awards recorded here, which is 91% of them, against 6 at South College. 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.

A Flagship Public And A For-Profit, Priced Closer Than They Look

The University of Tennessee-Knoxville publishes $11,560 in-state and South College publishes $16,450. On this site a public and a private institution in the same metro are usually separated by tens of thousands of dollars; here the gap is $4,890, which is small enough that price alone will not settle the choice.

Control is the thing to read instead. South College is classified as private for-profit in the federal survey, and it is one of very few for-profit institutions carrying an accredited DNP anywhere in this dataset. That is not a verdict on the program, and it is a genuine difference in how the institution is owned and financed, which is worth understanding before you enroll rather than afterwards.

The output figures are far apart. UT-Knoxville conferred 61 DNP awards in the reporting year and South College conferred 6. South College is the one flagged for distance education, so the smaller and slightly dearer program is again the more flexible one, which is the recurring shape across this batch of metros.

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 Knoxville 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 The University of Tennessee-Knoxville Knoxville, TN · Public $11,560 61 74% 100
2 of 2 South College Knoxville, TN · Private for-profit · offered online $16,450 6 42% 0

What This Guide Counts As The Knoxville Metro

This guide follows the Knoxville, TN metropolitan statistical area. Both institutions report Knoxville itself as their city. Tennessee carries three metro guides on this site and they share no institutions, so a reader comparing across the state is comparing three separate fields.

Municipalities Included

  • Knoxville, TN

Deliberately Not Included

  • Maryville and Alcoa, TN Inside the metro and carrying no institution in the accredited dataset.
  • Harrogate, TN Outside the metropolitan area, in the Middlesborough micropolitan area on the Kentucky line.
  • Memphis and Nashville, TN Separate metropolitan areas at the other end of the state, each with its own guide.

The Best 2 DNP Programs In Knoxville, Ranked

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

Ranked 1 of 2

The University of Tennessee-Knoxville

Knoxville, TN

100 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Public
  • Doctorate (research)

Tennessee’s nurse anesthesia program has been approved by the Council on Accreditation to award the doctorate as the entry credential since June 2019, which matters because the profession moved to doctoral entry and schools converted at different times. The licensing condition rewards a close read too: you need an unencumbered registered nurse license in your state of residence, not simply somewhere. And if you finished a graduate degree within the past two years, one of your rating forms has to come from a faculty member in that program, so references from work alone will not do. Knoxville confers one of the larger numbers of nursing doctorates in the country, so the cohort is substantial rather than a handful.

In-State Tuition
$11,560
Out-Of-State
$30,704
DNP Awards
61
UG Completion
74%

Scored on

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

Visit The University of Tennessee-Knoxville →

Ranked 2 of 2

South College

Knoxville, TN

0 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Private for-profit
  • Doctorate (professional)
  • Offered online

South College runs two DNPs on very different clocks. The nurse anesthesia concentration is a fixed full-time plan, 36 months across 12 quarters, with no part-time option in the published curriculum. The post-master’s DNP is the opposite: online, and paced by how fast you demonstrate mastery rather than by a semester calendar, with average completion falling between 18 and 30 months and the quickest full-time route at 21. That is a twelve-month spread between two students taking the same degree. So the honest planning question here is not how long the program takes, it is how many hours a week you can genuinely put into it.

In-State Tuition
$16,450
Out-Of-State
$16,450
DNP Awards
6
UG Completion
42%

Scored on

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

Visit South College →

Choosing A DNP Program In Knoxville

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

South College and The University of Tennessee-Knoxville are the whole of the field in Knoxville

South College and The University of Tennessee-Knoxville 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 Tennessee board of nursing rather than to the school.

Who Licenses You In The Knoxville 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.

Tennessee
Restricted Practice
Tennessee Board of Nursing

Every institution on this page sits in Tennessee, 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 Tennessee . 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.

Tennessee, designated areas
152
Tennessee, of those rural
109

These figures cover Tennessee in full rather than the Knoxville 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: Tennessee.

Studying From Outside The Knoxville Metro

1 of the 2 accredited doctorates in the Knoxville 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 Knoxville metro this cycle, and whether it will place you for supervised clinical hours near where you live.

Which Knoxville 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: The University of Tennessee-Knoxville

The lowest published in-state rate among Knoxville's publics, at $11,560 a year. An annual rate, not a program total, and it assumes residency.

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

The University of Tennessee-Knoxville publishes a $19,144 annual gap between its in-state and out-of-state rates, the widest of the 1 Knoxville public publishing both. Start with the registrar, not admissions.

If you hold a bachelor's: South College states that route

South College's own pages name a bachelor's entry. Others in Knoxville 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: South College

South College 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: South College

South College 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 Knoxville?

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

What counts as the Knoxville metro on this page?

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

Is it cheaper to study for a DNP in Knoxville 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 Knoxville, TN 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.

Compare accredited DNP programs

Browse all programs