Best DNP Programs

Phoenix metro

Best DNP Programs In Phoenix 2026

3 accredited institutions in the Phoenix metro, with school-wide average graduate tuition from $10,138 to $16,215 a year in state.
A hillside of low houses and desert scrub at sunset, a rocky ridge rising on the right and a hazy valley reaching to distant mountains
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 1.6 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 3 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

    Output is concentrated in one school. Grand Canyon University conferred 91 of the 192 DNP awards recorded across this metro, with Arizona State University next at 70. A number that lopsided says where the cohorts and the placement relationships are, which a ranking position does not.

  4. 4

    2 of 3 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.

Public And Private Rates Sit Closer Than Usual Here

School-wide average graduate tuition in this metro, which excludes DNP add-on charges, runs from $10,138 a year in state at Grand Canyon University to $16,215 at University of Phoenix, about one and a half times apart, in the 2023-24 federal figures.

The one public institution publishes $12,376 in state, and the two private institutions publish $10,138 to $16,215. Out of state, the public rate rises to $25,722.

Grand Canyon University conferred the most DNPs in the metro in the reporting year, 91, and charges the lowest 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.

How This Ranking Is Scored

Three published figures, weighted. Scores are relative to the 3 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 3 DNP Programs In Phoenix, 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 3

Grand Canyon University

Phoenix, AZ

87.7 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Private for-profit
  • Professional practice doctorate
  • Offered online

Grand Canyon runs two versions of the doctorate, and the difference between them is one course and one practicum. The base program is the comprehensive doctorate. The organizational leadership version adds a leadership course and a practicum aimed at systems strategy and organizational change, and it runs 33 credits online in eight-week blocks. Eight-week courses mean fewer subjects at once and each one finished faster, which suits a nurse who would rather sprint through one topic than juggle three. The university runs a transfer evaluation before you commit, so what your existing graduate credit is worth gets settled up front rather than after you enroll. This is a large online university, and the doctoral cohort is spread across the country.

Tuition
$10,138
In-state
Tuition
$10,138
Out-of-state
DNP Awards
91
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
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 46.8

Visit Grand Canyon University →

Ranked 2 of 3

Arizona State University Campus Immersion

Tempe, AZ

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

Arizona State runs its DNP majors at 84 credit hours and publishes the practicum inside that total rather than alongside it. The primary care pediatric track puts 13 of those credits, 585 clock hours, into practicum in a community setting. The acute care pediatric track goes considerably further at 1,170 practicum hours, which the college notes exceeds what the degree standard requires, and 600 of those must be direct patient care supervised by a nurse practitioner or a physician preceptor. If you already hold a master’s, up to 30 credit hours can be carried across, though that needs sign-off from your supervisory committee and the Graduate College rather than being automatic. Delivery is not uniform either: the education major is online while the pediatric majors sit at Downtown Phoenix.

Tuition
$12,376
In-state
Tuition
$25,722
Out-of-state
DNP Awards
70
Completion
68%
Undergraduate
About the tuition figures
School-wide graduate average, 2023-24. Excludes DNP add-on charges.

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 63.2
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 100

Visit Arizona State University Campus Immersion →

Ranked 3 of 3

University of Phoenix-Arizona

Phoenix, AZ

0 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Private for-profit
  • Professional practice doctorate
  • Offered online

Phoenix attaches a recency condition that most schools leave out. You need a master’s in nursing, an unencumbered RN license, a cumulative grade point average of 3.0, and the equivalent of three years of full-time nursing work within the past ten years. That last clause is the one to read twice. Experience that has aged past a decade does not count, so a nurse coming back after a long stretch away from practice has a problem here that another school would not create. This is a for-profit university and the largest institution on this site by enrollment, though the nursing doctorate is a small part of it. Phoenix confers about thirty a year, which against an enrollment above a hundred thousand is among the lowest doctoral outputs for size in the country.

Tuition
$16,215
In-state
Tuition
$16,215
Out-of-state
DNP Awards
31
Completion
21%
Undergraduate
About the tuition figures
School-wide graduate average, 2023-24. Excludes DNP add-on charges.

Scored on

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

Visit University of Phoenix-Arizona →

What This Guide Counts As The Phoenix Metro

This guide follows the Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler metropolitan statistical area. Arizona State University is in Tempe, about fifteen minutes from central Phoenix, and the other two report Phoenix. As in Minneapolis, two of the three teach nationally at a distance rather than to this metro, and the section below says which.

Municipalities Included

  • Phoenix, AZ
  • Tempe, AZ

Deliberately Not Included

  • Tucson, AZ Its own metropolitan area, about ninety minutes south.
  • Flagstaff, AZ A separate metro in the north of the state.
  • Mesa and Chandler, AZ Named in the metro title, but no institution in the accredited dataset reports either as its city.

Choosing A DNP Program In Phoenix

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

What Arizona State University Campus Immersion charges depends on where you live

It is the one public institution in the Phoenix metro publishing both rates, at $12,376 in state against $25,722 out of state, a difference of $13,346 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.

A field of 3 is small enough to contact all of it

Arizona State University Campus Immersion, Grand Canyon University and University of Phoenix-Arizona are the accredited doctorates in the Phoenix metro, which is few enough that writing to every one of them is a morning's work rather than a project. It is also the fastest way to learn what no program page prints: who secures your clinical placement, what the school charges if a doctoral project runs past its term, and which tracks are open to new applicants this cycle. Against a field this size, a reply beats a rubric.

The Arizona 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.

Grand Canyon University and University of Phoenix-Arizona carry the distance flag

2 of the 3 measured institutions in the Phoenix 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 Arizona is the field

This page covers the institutions inside the Phoenix 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 Arizona 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 Phoenix 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.

Arizona
Full Practice
Arizona State Board of Nursing

Every institution on this page sits in Arizona, so one board licenses all of them and AANP classifies the jurisdiction as full 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 Arizona . 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 Phoenix Metro

BLS OEWS, May 2025, metropolitan area cut for Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ, read 2026-09-10. 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, Phoenix metroEmployedNational median
Nurse Practitioners29-1171$136,2705,450$132,300
Nurse Anesthetists29-1151$237,200230$236,590
Registered Nurses29-1141$100,83053,700$97,550
Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary25-1072$71,7401,420$80,250

Nurse practitioners in the Phoenix metro have a median of $136,270, across about 5,450 of them, $3,970 above 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.

Arizona, designated areas
227
Arizona, of those rural
109

These figures cover Arizona in full rather than the Phoenix 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: Arizona.

Studying From Outside The Phoenix Metro

Most of the measured field here is distance-flagged, 2 of 3 accredited doctorates in the Phoenix metro, so the question is less whether you can study at a distance and more whether an out-of-state program offers anything the local ones do not. 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 Phoenix metro this cycle, and whether it will place you for supervised clinical hours near where you live.

Which Phoenix 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: Arizona State University Campus Immersion

The lowest published in-state rate among Phoenix's publics, at $12,376 a year. An annual rate, not a program total, and it assumes residency.

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

Arizona State University Campus Immersion publishes a $13,346 annual gap between its in-state and out-of-state rates, the widest of the 1 Phoenix public publishing both. Start with the registrar, not admissions.

If you hold a bachelor's: Arizona State University Campus Immersion states that route

Arizona State University Campus Immersion's own pages name a bachelor's entry. Others in Phoenix 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: Grand Canyon University

Grand Canyon University 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: 2 institutions here carry the distance flag

Grand Canyon University, University of Phoenix-Arizona carry it. 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 Phoenix?

3 institutions in the Phoenix metro hold CCNE accreditation for the Doctor of Nursing Practice. This guide counts the Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ metropolitan statistical area rather than the city limits, so the figure includes institutions in 2 municipalities.

What counts as the Phoenix metro on this page?

The Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ metropolitan statistical area. In practice that means these municipalities: Phoenix, AZ; Tempe, AZ. Places deliberately left out are listed on this page with the reason.

Is it cheaper to study for a DNP in Phoenix 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 Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ 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.

Sponsored

DNP Degree Programs

Schools pay to appear in these listings. They are separate from our rankings, which no school can pay to change.