Texas has the second-largest field of accredited doctorates and one of the cheapest, with 13 of 20 measured institutions public. It is also a restricted practice state, so the credential costs less here and does less on its own.
Every public rate here is below every private one.The 13 public institutions publish average graduate tuition between $3,239 and $12,012 a year in state. The 7 private ones start at $12,475 and run to $41,130. Control, not the individual school, is what sorts the price here.
2
13 of the field is public.That is what makes the lower group possible, and it is also what makes residency the single largest variable on this page. Every rate in the lower group is a resident rate, and a nonresident pays a public school's out-of-state rate instead.
3
AANP puts Texas in its restricted practice category.Its most limited classification, read from AANP's own Texas fact sheet. The degree is cheap here by national standards and the rules on what it lets you do independently are among the tightest, which is a trade worth seeing before you choose on price.
4
402 designated shortage areas.264 of them rural. That is the largest count of any jurisdiction on this site, and it is what makes the two federal loan repayment routes unusually relevant to a Texas graduate.
Public Rates Below, Private Rates Above
Sort every published in-state graduate rate in Texas and one line does
the sorting: public or private. The 13 public institutions run
from $3,239 to $12,012, and the 7
private ones start at $12,475 and run to $41,130. No private rate here comes
in under a public one.
That shape is not an accident of who filed what. 13 of the 20 measured institutions here are public, which is the highest
public share of any large field on this site, and a public graduate rate
for a resident is a different kind of number from a private one. So the
practical question in Texas is not where a school sits on a price
spectrum. It is whether you are choosing a public program or a private one,
and whether you qualify for the resident rate that makes the public one cheap.
Read the ranking below with that in mind. The scoring model normalizes within
Texas, so the cost factor is measuring distance from $3,239 rather than from a national midpoint, and a
private program will score poorly on cost against 13
public neighbors no matter how good it is. That is the model working as
intended, and it is also why the cards underneath matter more here than the
ranking does.
How This Ranking Is Scored
Three published figures, weighted. Scores are relative to the
20 institutions on this page and to nothing
else.
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.
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.
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 20 DNP Programs In Texas, Ranked
Scored against the other Texas programs rather than against the country.
Every ranked institution in Texas, with what the federal record
publishes for it and how its score was composed.
UTMB draws a hard line between its routes. The BSN-to-DNP nurse anesthesia program is 112 credit hours over an intensive 36 months, which is roughly triple a post-master’s load and the honest price of becoming a CRNA. The executive leadership track works on a different clock: national certification, whether NEA-BC, NE-BC, CNML or CENP, must already be complete before the first practicum course begins, so it is a doctorate for nurses who have finished credentialing, not one that credentials you. Practitioner tracks let you build hours in acute settings, outpatient settings or both. Most post-master’s students accumulate their remaining 500 hours through the scholarly project rather than direct patient care.
Texas Tech keeps a public archive of its DNP projects, year by year, and it is the most revealing thing the college publishes. Graduates in it work as pediatric intensive care nurses, adult-gerontology acute care practitioners and directors of critical care services, with projects aimed at problems like burnout on level IV neonatal units. That is the range the program actually supports, described by the people who finished it. It is a health sciences center in Lubbock rather than a nursing school inside a general campus, so the faculty around you are all in health professions, and West Texas geography shapes where students end up doing clinical work.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Cizik School of Nursing sorts applicants by who they already are. The post-master’s tracks are written for practicing nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists, and for nurses moving into leadership rather than deeper into clinical work. The BSN-to-DNP routes are described as built for nurses who are still working, and the adult-gerontology acute care track within them prepares you to be the provider for adolescents and adults with complex illness. That is hospital medicine rather than primary care. If you are choosing between a leadership doctorate and an advanced practice one, this is a school that keeps the two visibly separate rather than folding leadership coursework into a clinical track and calling it both.
Arlington states something almost no school puts in writing: you must carry medical insurance covering emergency department evaluation and follow-up treatment for needle-stick injuries and blood-borne disease exposure, and the university will not cover that treatment itself. The requirement comes from the UT System Board of Regents. It is not a large cost next to tuition, but it is a real one, and knowing which risks sit with you rather than with the school is worth more than most brochure copy. The college runs a wide graduate ladder beside the doctorate, including practitioner master’s routes in adult-gerontology acute and primary care, psychiatric mental health, and pediatric acute and primary care, plus registered-nurse bridges into most of them.
UT Tyler runs its main doctorate part-time and primarily online at an average of two courses a semester, finishing in three years, a pace built around people who are not stepping back from work. The application asks for a three to five page paper naming your area of interest and saying why this program in particular, so the essay does real filtering rather than serving as a formality. Priority applications close 1 April for a fall start, with a final deadline of 15 June. Alongside it runs a very different thing: a 36-month nurse anesthesia doctorate that also prepares you as an adult-gerontology acute care practitioner, aimed at critical care nurses. Two credentials out of one intense sequence.
Texas publishes the hidden costs most programs leave you to discover. The post-MSN DNP is hybrid across five semesters, and the college states plainly that tuition covers neither textbooks nor the travel and accommodation of getting to Austin for the on-campus portion, and that you will be charged $15 a year for liability cover. The 1,000 clinical practice hours sit inside the clinical specialization courses, and up to 500 hours completed during an MSN can be counted toward them. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the middle third of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures. The post-MSN degree is 45 credit hours across those five semesters, which works out at roughly nine credits a term.
Corpus Christi’s doctorate is young. The practitioner track admitted its first class in fall 2016, seven students graduated in 2018, and an executive leadership track followed in fall 2019. Two routes run now, one clinical and one for leadership, so the program has had time to settle without being long established. Online students defend their doctoral projects to the university community rather than to a closed committee, which changes how the work ends and what it has to withstand. Graduates are pointed at South Texas health care and the projects reflect that, taking on problems in the communities the program serves. It is accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education.
El Paso runs its doctorate as a post-master’s degree and pairs it with two post-graduate certificate routes, split by whether you already hold advanced practice registered nurse recognition. That split is the useful part: a nurse who is already an APRN and one who holds a master’s without that recognition are sent down different paths rather than into one queue. The college states plainly that it prepares graduates for practice across Texas and nationally, and the doctorate carries no distance flag in its federal filing, so plan on being in El Paso. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the cheapest tenth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is about 2.5 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
UT Health San Antonio publishes the conversion most schools leave implicit: one semester credit hour of practicum equals four clock hours a week for that semester, and the ratio holds across every DNP track. Multiply it out before you enroll and you will know what a six-credit practicum term actually costs you in time, which is the calculation that decides whether a program fits around shift work. The school also publishes doctoral graduation rates and average time to degree by cohort instead of leaving you to ask. This is a health science center with no undergraduate arts college attached, so everyone around you is in a health profession. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the cheapest tenth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is about 4 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
Texas Woman’+A+’s requires 540 practicum hours in your chosen area of clinical expertise plus a scholarly project, and it assesses at admission how many hours a post-master’+A+’s student is bringing forward. That assessment is the thing to settle early, because it decides how much of the 1,000-hour requirement you still owe. Provisional admission exists for applicants at or just above a 3.0: the first 12 credit hours must be passed at B or better, at least six of them in nursing. The program carries a distance-education flag. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the cheapest tenth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures.
Prairie View is a historically Black university whose college of nursing publishes its outcomes rather than keeping them internal: employment a year after graduation, first-attempt licensure pass rates, and on-time completion, each reported by cohort year. Schools that publish completion rates alongside pass rates are giving you the harder number as well as the flattering one. A doctoral student here was selected as a Jonas Scholar for 2024 to 2026, which is a national award for nurses working on projects in priority areas. The doctorate is accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education and carries no distance flag federally. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the cheapest tenth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is about 3 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
Houston caps what you can carry forward, and the number is worth checking before you compare it with anywhere else. The maximum clinical hours it will accept from an MSN is 500, whatever you actually logged. So if your master’s carried 700 or 800 practicum hours, two or three hundred of them stop counting the moment you enroll here, and the post-master’s DNP still runs 37 to 42 credit hours over eight semesters. Against a school that applies your full master’s total against the 1,000, that is a real difference in time rather than a technicality. Eight semesters is the published shape whichever end of the credit range you land on.
Rio Grande Valley runs a 45-credit doctorate delivered entirely online and finishing in about two and a half years. What makes it worth a look is who it will take: a nurse holding a bachelor’s with a registered nurse license, or one holding a master’s, or one already certified as an advanced practice registered nurse, all enter the same program. Schools usually split those applicants into separate tracks, and consolidating them is simpler to navigate if your background does not fit a standard box. The degree prepares graduates for leadership and administration or for advanced practice. It is a young program, launched in 2022, so it is still establishing rather than long settled.
Abilene Christian teaches its online programs in seven-week terms rather than semesters, so you carry fewer courses at once and finish each of them faster. Its scholarship terms are written around continuous enrollment across consecutive parts of term, which rewards momentum and penalizes pauses, so the structure suits someone who can commit to a steady run rather than stopping and starting. Against its size, ACU confers nursing doctorates at a rate in the top eighth of accredited institutions nationally, so the doctoral program is substantial even though the university is better known for other things. The master’s beneath it runs 36 credit hours with concentrations in nurse education and nursing administration.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.
Incarnate Word offers two entries with very different flexibility. Bachelor’s entry is full-time only and leads to either family or psychiatric mental health practitioner work. Master’s entry runs full-time or part-time and is scoped to advanced practice registered nurses and to nurses holding a clinically focused master’s, so a management or education master’s is not the intended input here. Full-time only on the bachelor’s route is the constraint that settles it for most working nurses, and the school states it plainly rather than burying it. Neither track carries a distance flag in the federal filing, so plan on San Antonio.
West Coast runs its DNP entirely online and puts the fastest route at 20 months, which is at the short end of anything published by a school on this site. It also advertises no waitlist, and that matters more than it sounds. A lot of programs admit once a year into a fixed cohort, so a place can still be twelve months away after you have been accepted. The curriculum is built around strategic leadership and project management rather than around a clinical specialty, with the final four credits varying by the specialty you enroll in. It is a for-profit institution and its Texas campus confers a small number of doctorates a year, so this is a compact program rather than a large one, whatever the flexible format suggests about scale.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Nursing administration, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Baylor confers 196 doctorates in nursing practice a year, which is among the largest outputs in the country and is explained by an online school running several tracks at once. The pediatric route splits in two and the college is explicit about the difference: a primary care track working with children and families, and an acute care track for pediatric patients with complex, critical or chronic illness in hospitals, intensive care units and emergency departments. The family route is post-master’+A+’s only, gated on an MSN in family practice, a 3.0 cumulative GPA and existing board certification. Note that the pediatric track is not currently offered at post-master’+A+’s level, so the two population focuses admit from different places.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Texas Wesleyan frames its DNP around what the degree does to a career rather than what it adds to a transcript: staying close to direct patient care, moving gradually into leadership, or combining clinical work with teaching, policy and quality improvement. The college is candid that the executive endpoint is about shaping an organization rather than running a single unit, and that what it pays varies widely by health system size and region rather than by the credential. Six doctorates a year from a private university of 2,487 in Fort Worth makes this a small program by design. Up to 500 practice hours from a qualifying master’s can be transferred toward the 1,000 the degree requires.
St Thomas has the smallest doctoral output of any institution on this site, conferring about one degree a year, so treat this as a program to ask direct questions about rather than one with an established cohort behind it. The graduate ladder beneath it is more developed: a master’s with four concentrations, and a post-master’s psychiatric mental health certificate for advanced practice nurses that leads to eligibility for national certification in that specialty. The doctorate carries no distance flag in its federal filing, so plan on Houston. The university says it has taught nursing in the city for more than a century.
4 DNP tracks at this
institution, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general), Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.
TCU runs something most nursing schools do not: a bridge from the practice doctorate to a research PhD, for nurses who already hold a DNP and want to move from implementing evidence to producing it. That route wants a 3.5 grade point average, with provisional admission considered at 3.0. It matters if you think you might eventually teach or lead research, because it means you are not choosing between the two doctorates permanently when you pick this one. The psychiatric mental health route from a bachelor’s takes three years and asks for a single year of nursing experience, which is a low floor for a psychiatric track and makes it reachable earlier in a career than most.
These institutions hold
CCNE accreditation for the doctorate and file
conferrals under a specialty classification rather than under Nursing
Practice, so the federal figures behind the ranking above do not exist for them.
Texas A&M's leadership doctorate is asynchronous online across seven semesters, taken part-time, and entry requires a graduate nursing degree, so this is a post-master's route rather than one you enter from a bachelor's. The sentence worth holding onto is about placement: students may complete most clinical hours in their own communities. For a leadership doctorate that is the practical difference between a degree you can do from Amarillo and one that requires you to be near College Station. Texas A&M also runs regular information sessions covering admission requirements, prerequisites and clinical experiences, which is the cheapest way to get the answers this page does not carry.
The San Antonio doctorate sits in a school of nursing that changed names before the federal data caught up: UTSA and UT Health San Antonio merged in September 2025 into a single university, and its school of nursing is the one described here. The tracks are sized very differently. Advanced practice leadership is 41 credit hours and public health nurse leader is 48, while the adult-gerontology acute care and family nurse practitioner tracks run 76. Every student completes 1,000 clinical and practicum hours after the bachelor's, and from a bachelor's that splits into a minimum of 270 DNP project hours and 810 advanced practice clinical hours. A separate nurse anesthesia doctorate runs alongside them.
What The Cheap Tier Does Not Buy
A cheap doctorate is worth less if the license behind it is more
constrained, and in Texas it is. AANP places the state in its restricted practice category, the most limited of the three, which it defines as
state law requiring career-long supervision, delegation or team management
by another health provider in order for a nurse practitioner to provide
patient care.
That is worth holding against the price tiers rather than reading as a
footnote. The same degree from the same accredited program buys different
working conditions depending on the state you license in, and a $3,239 rate in a restricted practice state is not
straightforwardly better value than a higher rate somewhere the license
does more. It is a different trade, and which side of it suits you depends
on whether you intend to practice in Texas afterwards.
None of that is settled by this page. AANP's category is its reading of
statute rather than a federal designation, the statute moves each
legislative session, and the Texas Board of Nursing is the body that
decides what it accepts. The licensure section below links it.
Nursys, the national
license verification system operated by the boards themselves
AANP places Texas in its restricted practice category,
which it defines this way: state law restricts the ability to engage in at least one element of practice, requiring supervision, delegation or team management by another health provider for the nurse practitioner to give patient care.
A degree confers no prescriptive authority. It comes from a state advanced practice license and the national certification behind it, so a DNP-prepared and a master’s-prepared nurse practitioner holding the same license prescribe the same things.
So the thing to settle here is the supervision requirement rather than
the diploma. Ask the board what supervision, delegation or team
management the statute requires, and ask an employer who provides it,
because in a restricted state that arrangement is a condition of working
at all rather than a formality.
Practice environment from AANP's Texas fact sheet, read 2026-09-08;
AANP last revised the classification 05/2026. It is AANP's reading of
state statute rather than a federal designation, and statutes move each legislative
session, so confirm it with the board before you rely on it.
Board details read from the NCSBN member directory on 2026-09-08.
Licensure requirements change by legislative session, so treat anything
you read here as a pointer to the board rather than a substitute for it.
What The Work Pays In Texas
BLS OEWS, May 2025. 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.
Nurse practitioners in Texas have a median of $131,670, which ranks 25 of the 51 jurisdictions the survey publishes a median for, across about 25,970 people in the state.
Mid-table pay across one of the larger workforces the survey measures, which usually means the spread within the state matters more than the state figure does.
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.
Every row is one federal series, ranked against every jurisdiction that
series covers. Nothing here is a job-board average. DNP salary sets out the
national picture.
Shortage Areas, And The Debt Relief Attached To Them
HRSA designated primary-care Health Professional Shortage Areas, read 2026-09-08.
Designated areas
402
Of those, rural
264
Median score
16
Highest score
23
Most designated shortage in Texas is rural, 264 of 402 designations, but the
remaining 138
sit in urban and suburban areas, so eligibility is not only a country
question here. A designation is a statement about how many primary-care providers
serve a defined area relative to its population. It describes supply,
not hiring.
Priority varies between them: a median score of 16
against a highest of 23. Worth asking what a specific
site scores rather than assuming the state figure applies to it.
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.
Whether a particular employer counts as an approved site is settled by
the program, not by the designation, so check the site before you take
the job rather than after. HRSA's shortage-area data portal
maps the designations. Paying for a DNP
covers the routes that do not depend on where you practice.
Studying From Outside Texas
5 of the 22 accredited doctorates in Texas 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 Texas this cycle, and whether it will place you for supervised clinical
hours near where you live.
Which Texas 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.
The lowest published in-state rate among Texas's publics, at $3,239 a year. An annual rate, not a program total, and it assumes residency.
If you are moving to Texas: settle residency before you apply
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston publishes a $24,774 annual gap between its in-state and out-of-state rates, the widest of the 13 Texas publics publishing both. Start with the registrar, not admissions.
Baylor University's own pages name a bachelor's entry. Others in Texas 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: Baylor University
Baylor 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: 5 institutions here carry the distance flag
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. How this site scores programs
sets out each input and its weight in full.
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers specific to Texas. The degree-wide questions are answered on the guides.
How much does a DNP cost in Texas?
Published annual in-state rates run from $3,239 at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio to $41,130 at Baylor University. The public rates all sit under $12,012 and the private rates start at $12,475. These are average graduate tuition figures for 2023-24, not DNP prices, and some programs add a doctoral differential on top. All of these are annual institutional rates rather than program totals, and most programs bill by the credit, so multiplying one by a program length produces a confident number that is wrong.
Can a nurse practitioner practice independently in Texas?
AANP classifies Texas as a restricted practice jurisdiction, which is its most limited category and means state law requires career-long supervision, delegation or team management by another health provider for a nurse practitioner to deliver patient care. That is AANP's reading of statute rather than a federal designation, statutes change each legislative session, and the specifics are the board's to state, so confirm the current position with the Texas Board of Nursing before you plan around it.
Does a DNP change what I am allowed to do in Texas?
No. Authority to practice and prescribe comes from the state advanced practice license and the national certification behind it, not from the degree, so a DNP-prepared and a master's-prepared nurse practitioner holding the same license work under the same rules. What the doctorate changes is the range of roles you can compete for, particularly in leadership and faculty, and in nurse anesthesia it is now the entry requirement.
Which Texas programs can I do at a distance?
5 of the measured Texas institutions carry the federal distance-education flag. That flag records only that taught content can be delivered remotely: the supervised clinical hours happen in a facility with a preceptor present wherever you enroll, and campus requirements are set by the school. Ask each one how many on-campus days it expects and in which months.
Is in-state tuition worth relocating for?
It is the largest single number on this page for an out-of-state applicant, because 13 of the 20 measured institutions are public and every low rate here is a resident rate. Residency is decided by the state under its own rules and studying at a distance does not confer it, so the registrar's residency office is a more useful first call than any admissions office.
Sources
Every figure on this page comes from one of the datasets below, and nothing here is compiled from a school's own marketing material.
2IPEDS Tuition, conferrals, completion and the distance-education flag.
3AANP State Practice Environment The full, reduced or restricted classification for Texas, taken from AANP's own fact sheet for the jurisdiction. AANP last revised the classification 05/2026. Read .
6AANP Texas State Fact Sheet The restricted practice classification for Texas, read from AANP's own fact sheet for the jurisdiction. Read .
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.
