Best DNP Programs

Portland metro

Best DNP Programs In Portland 2026

Two accredited institutions filing seven DNP tracks between them, against five doctorates conferred in the reporting year.
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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 1.2 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. Oregon Health & Science University publishes $21,375 in-state, against $26,100 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 Portland is most of this metro. It conferred 4 of the 5 DNP awards recorded here, which is 80% of them, against 1 at Oregon Health & Science University. Treat the others as genuinely small programs rather than as alternatives of a similar size.

  4. 4

    Nothing here is distance-flagged. No institution in this metro carries the federal distance-education flag. It records an institutional filing rather than how a program runs, so ask each school directly, but plan on being in the room.

The Public Program Runs Five Tracks And Conferred One Doctorate

School-wide average graduate tuition in this metro, which excludes DNP add-on charges, runs from $21,375 a year in state at Oregon Health & Science University to $26,100 at University of Portland, within a quarter of each other, in the 2023-24 federal figures.

The one public institution publishes $21,375 in state, and the one private institution publishes $26,100.

University of Portland conferred the most DNPs in the metro in the reporting year, 4, 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.

Oregon Health & Science University files five distinct DNP tracks in the federal survey, more than any other institution added to this site in this batch, and conferred 1 DNP award in the reporting year. The University of Portland files two tracks and conferred 4.

A single conferral against five tracks is the sort of figure that needs reading carefully rather than quoting. It is one year of one survey, it says nothing about how many students are enrolled, and at an academic health center with several small population-focused tracks a low count in a given year is unremarkable. What it does mean is that a reader cannot infer cohort size from this page and should ask the program directly.

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 Portland, 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

Oregon Health & Science University

Portland, OR

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

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

Oregon Health and Science runs a dual-degree route for people coming from outside nursing entirely: a bachelor’s in a non-nursing field plus prerequisites gets you 15 months to the BS, and then three years for the doctorate. That is a genuine career-change path rather than an advancement one, and few schools publish the whole span. Coursework is online with some in-person requirements. It also files seven separate DNP records federally, more than all but one institution in this dataset, and it confers doctorates at one of the highest rates in the country measured against its enrollment, which is what a specialist health sciences campus looks like in the data.

Tuition
$21,375
In-state
Tuition
$21,375
Out-of-state
DNP Awards
1
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

Visit Oregon Health & Science University →

Ranked 2 of 2

University of Portland

Portland, OR

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

2 DNP tracks at this institution, Family nurse practitioner, Geriatric. Ranked once, on the largest.

Portland decouples clinical hours from coursework and says why: the hours are designed for broad exposure across the lifespan and do not have to be paired with a specific management course, which makes placements easier to arrange. If you have ever lost a term waiting for the right rotation to line up with the right class, that is the constraint being removed. There is also a palliative care focus, and the school is precise about what it demands. Sitting the Advanced Certified Hospice and Palliative Nurse exam requires 500 palliative care clinical hours completed within the previous 12 months, so when you do those hours matters as much as how many. Neither track carries a distance flag federally.

Tuition
$26,100
In-state
Tuition
$26,100
Out-of-state
DNP Awards
4
Completion
80%
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

Visit University of Portland →

What This Guide Counts As The Portland Metro

This guide follows the Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA metropolitan statistical area, which crosses the Columbia River into Washington State. Both institutions report Portland itself as their city, so the state line in the metro name does not change this list. It does decide which board licenses a reader living in Vancouver, which is a short drive and a different jurisdiction.

Municipalities Included

  • Portland, OR

Deliberately Not Included

  • Vancouver, WA Named in the metro title, across the Columbia River in Washington State, and carrying no institution in the accredited dataset. It is a different state board for a fifteen-minute drive.
  • Hillsboro and Beaverton, OR Named in the metro title or inside it, and carrying no institution in the accredited dataset.
  • Eugene and Corvallis, OR Separate metropolitan areas south along the Willamette Valley.

Choosing A DNP Program In Portland

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

Oregon Health & Science University and University of Portland are the whole of the field in Portland

Oregon Health & Science University and University of Portland 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 Oregon board of nursing rather than to the school.

Who Licenses You In The Portland 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.

Oregon
Full Practice
Oregon State Board of Nursing

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

Oregon, designated areas
142
Oregon, of those rural
96

These figures cover Oregon in full rather than the Portland 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: Oregon.

Studying From Outside The Portland Metro

the Portland metro holds 2 accredited doctorates and none of the measured ones carries the federal distance-education flag. That flag is an institutional filing rather than a description of any one program, so the local field may reach further than it looks, but a program run elsewhere is the route to check first. 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 Portland metro 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, 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 Portland?

2 institutions in the Portland metro hold CCNE accreditation for the Doctor of Nursing Practice. This guide counts the Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA metropolitan statistical area rather than the city limits, so the figure includes institutions in 1 municipalities.

What counts as the Portland metro on this page?

The Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA metropolitan statistical area. In practice that means these municipalities: Portland, OR. Places deliberately left out are listed on this page with the reason.

Is it cheaper to study for a DNP in Portland 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 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA 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.