Best DNP Programs

Louisville metro

Best DNP Programs In Louisville 2026

2 accredited institutions in the Louisville metro, with school-wide average graduate tuition from $13,785 to $14,222 a year in state.
A downtown skyline seen across a broad river in daylight, two towers with red-lit crowns standing out among the others
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 1.0 times, which is tight for a metro. That pushes the decision onto track, cohort size and who arranges the clinical placement.

  2. 2

    The cheapest option here is private. 1 of the 2 are public, but the lowest published rate is not one of them. A private institution charges the same wherever you live, which inverts the residency arithmetic most metro pages rest on.

  3. 3

    University of Louisville is most of this metro. It conferred 31 of the 35 DNP awards recorded here, which is 89% of them, against 4 at Bellarmine 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.

A Public Flagship And A Small Private, And The River Changes Your License

School-wide average graduate tuition in this metro, which excludes DNP add-on charges, runs from $13,785 a year in state at Bellarmine University to $14,222 at University of Louisville, within a quarter of each other, in the 2023-24 federal figures.

The one public institution publishes $14,222 in state, and the one private institution publishes $13,785. Out of state, the public rate rises to $28,906.

University of Louisville conferred the most DNPs in the metro in the reporting year, 31, and charges the highest graduate rate here.

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.

What is less ordinary is the state line running through the middle of this metro. A nurse living in Jeffersonville or New Albany is a fifteen-minute drive from both campuses and is licensed by Indiana rather than Kentucky. That does not change which program admits you and it does change where you can practice on graduating, which is the kind of detail worth reading a board website about rather than assuming.

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. 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 2 DNP Programs In Louisville, 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 2

Bellarmine University

Louisville, KY

65 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Private nonprofit
  • Professional practice doctorate
  • Offered online

Bellarmine asks for a 3.5 in any graduate coursework you have already done, against 3.0 for undergraduate work, a higher bar than most and the first thing to check if you have a master’s behind you. The nurse anesthesia track wants a year of recent full-time critical care employment, within the past two years, evidenced on a verification form rather than asserted. Then an interview with graduate faculty. The catalog is unusually blunt about what follows: enrollment in that track is limited, and meeting every minimum does not assure admission. Post-master’s applicants choose between advanced nursing practice and executive leadership, and delivery is online or hybrid depending on the route.

Tuition
$13,785
In-state
Tuition
$13,785
Out-of-state
DNP Awards
4
Completion
64%
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 0
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 100

Visit Bellarmine University →

Ranked 2 of 2

University of Louisville

Louisville, KY

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

Louisville is exact about the critical care experience its nurse anesthesia route wants, and the detail matters more than the minimum does. One year of full-time critical care, recent, with employment verification, and preference goes to applicants whose work routinely involved hemodynamic monitoring, mechanical ventilation and vasoactive drug administration. A year on a general medical floor will not read the same way as a year in an intensive care unit, and the catalog says so in as many words. The wider doctorate can be entered from a bachelor’s or a master’s across several specialties, and admission is reviewed holistically rather than on grade point average alone, though 3.0 is the recommended floor.

Tuition
$14,222
In-state
Tuition
$28,906
Out-of-state
DNP Awards
31
Completion
61%
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 100
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 0

Visit University of Louisville →

What This Guide Counts As The Louisville Metro

This guide follows the Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN metropolitan statistical area, which crosses the Ohio River into southern Indiana. Both institutions report Louisville itself as their city, so the state line in the metro name does not change this list. It does change which board licenses you if you live on the Indiana side, and that is worth settling before you apply.

Municipalities Included

  • Louisville, KY

Deliberately Not Included

  • The Indiana side of the metro Jeffersonville, New Albany and Clarksville sit inside the metropolitan area and across the Ohio River, and none carries an institution in the accredited dataset. The state line matters for licensure rather than for this list.
  • Lexington, KY Its own metropolitan area about seventy miles east, and the University of Kentucky sits in it.

Choosing A DNP Program In Louisville

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

Bellarmine University and University of Louisville are the whole of the field in Louisville

Bellarmine University and University of Louisville 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 Kentucky board of nursing rather than to the school.

Who Licenses You In The Louisville 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.

Kentucky
Reduced Practice
Kentucky Board of Nursing

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

Kentucky, designated areas
256
Kentucky, of those rural
225

These figures cover Kentucky in full rather than the Louisville 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: Kentucky.

Studying From Outside The Louisville Metro

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

Which Louisville 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 Louisville

The lowest published in-state rate among Louisville's publics, at $14,222 a year. An annual rate, not a program total, and it assumes residency.

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

University of Louisville publishes a $14,684 annual gap between its in-state and out-of-state rates, the widest of the 1 Louisville public publishing both. Start with the registrar, not admissions.

If you cannot relocate: Bellarmine University

Bellarmine 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.

If residency is out of reach: the private rate does not depend on it

A private institution charges one figure wherever you live, so without residency the comparison is against the out-of-state public rate. In Louisville the cheapest published rate in the state belongs to one of its 1 private institution.

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 Louisville?

2 institutions in the Louisville metro hold CCNE accreditation for the Doctor of Nursing Practice. This guide counts the Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN metropolitan statistical area rather than the city limits, so the figure includes institutions in 1 municipalities.

What counts as the Louisville metro on this page?

The Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN metropolitan statistical area. In practice that means these municipalities: Louisville, KY. Places deliberately left out are listed on this page with the reason.

Is it cheaper to study for a DNP in Louisville 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 Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN 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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Schools pay to appear in these listings. They are separate from our rankings, which no school can pay to change.