Best DNP Programs

Sioux City metro

Best DNP Programs In Sioux City 2026

Two accredited institutions, both private, both small, and both flagged for distance study, in a metro that touches three states.
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Key Takeaways

  1. 1

    Price will not narrow this list. The published in-state rates here sit inside a band of roughly 1.1 times, which is tight for a metro. That pushes the decision onto track, cohort size and who arranges the clinical placement.

  2. 2

    Every institution here is private. No public option means residency buys you nothing in this metro. A private institution charges one rate wherever you live, so an out-of-state applicant is on the same terms as a local one.

  3. 3

    Morningside University is most of this metro. It conferred 7 of the 10 DNP awards recorded here, which is 70% of them, against 3 at Briar Cliff University. Treat the others as genuinely small programs rather than as alternatives of a similar size.

  4. 4

    Every measured program is distance-flagged. Which says less than it sounds: the flag covers taught content only. The supervised hours happen in person with a preceptor wherever you enroll, and campus days are the school's to set.

Two Small Private Colleges, Both Teaching At A Distance

Morningside University conferred 7 DNP awards in the reporting year and Briar Cliff University conferred 3. Both are private nonprofit institutions, both are flagged for distance education in the federal survey, and they publish $38,017 and $34,230 respectively. On almost every measure this site records, the two are close together.

They are also small as institutions, at 2,056 and 947 students. That is the smallest pair in any metro guide here, and it is worth reading alongside the distance flag rather than separately: a program of this size teaching at a distance is likely to be drawing students from well beyond the metro, which makes the local field a poor guide to who you would actually be studying with.

What this metro has that larger ones do not is three state boards inside one commute. A nurse living in South Sioux City, Nebraska or North Sioux City, South Dakota studies at an Iowa institution and is licensed somewhere else, and the practice authority attached to each of the three differs. Settle that before you enroll rather than at graduation.

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 Sioux City 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 Briar Cliff University Sioux City, IA · Private nonprofit · offered online $34,230 3 48% 50
2 of 2 Morningside University Sioux City, IA · Private nonprofit · offered online $38,017 7 50% 50

What This Guide Counts As The Sioux City Metro

This guide follows the Sioux City, IA-NE-SD metropolitan statistical area, which crosses the Missouri River into Nebraska and South Dakota. Both institutions report Sioux City itself as their city, so the two state lines in the metro name do not change this list. They do decide which board licenses you, and in a metro where three states meet inside a single commute that is a more practical question than it is almost anywhere else on this site.

Municipalities Included

  • Sioux City, IA

Deliberately Not Included

  • The Nebraska and South Dakota sides of the metro South Sioux City, Nebraska and North Sioux City, South Dakota are both inside the metropolitan area and neither carries an institution in the accredited dataset. Three states meet inside this metro and all of its accredited nursing sits in one of them.
  • Omaha, NE Its own metropolitan area about a hundred miles south, with three institutions and its own guide.
  • Des Moines, IA Its own metropolitan area on the other side of the state.

The Best 2 DNP Programs In Sioux City, Ranked

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

Ranked 1 of 2

Briar Cliff University

Sioux City, IA

50 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 100
  • Established program 0
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 0

Visit Briar Cliff University →

Ranked 2 of 2

Morningside University

Sioux City, IA

50 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 0
  • Established program 100
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 100

Visit Morningside University →

Choosing A DNP Program In Sioux City

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

Briar Cliff University and Morningside University are the whole of the field in Sioux City

Briar Cliff University and Morningside University 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 Iowa board of nursing rather than to the school.

Who Licenses You In The Sioux City 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.

Iowa
Full Practice
0

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

Iowa, designated areas
163
Iowa, of those rural
142

These figures cover Iowa in full rather than the Sioux City 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: Iowa.

Studying From Outside The Sioux City Metro

Most of the measured field here is distance-flagged, 2 of 2 accredited doctorates in the Sioux City 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 Sioux City metro this cycle, and whether it will place you for supervised clinical hours near where you live.

Which Sioux City 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 you hold a bachelor's: Morningside University states that route

Morningside University's own pages name a bachelor's entry. Others in Sioux City 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: Briar Cliff University

Briar Cliff 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

Briar Cliff University, Morningside University 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.

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 Sioux City the cheapest published rate in the state belongs to one of its 2 private institutions.

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 Sioux City?

2 institutions in the Sioux City metro hold CCNE accreditation for the Doctor of Nursing Practice. This guide counts the Sioux City, IA-NE-SD metropolitan statistical area rather than the city limits, so the figure includes institutions in 1 municipalities.

What counts as the Sioux City metro on this page?

The Sioux City, IA-NE-SD metropolitan statistical area. In practice that means these municipalities: Sioux City, IA. Places deliberately left out are listed on this page with the reason.

Is it cheaper to study for a DNP in Sioux City 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 Sioux City, IA-NE-SD 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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