The Most Affordable DNP Programs

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

Florida runs two routes into the doctorate and gates them differently. The BSN-to-DNP is built around online coursework for nurses moving up from the bedside. The MSN-to-DNP is open only to applicants holding a master’s in nursing and an active Florida APRN license, and that condition settles the question for most people before anything else does: if you already practice in Florida as an APRN, that is your route, and if you don’t, you’re applying to the longer one. Only five public universities in this dataset sit in the national top fifteen on both DNP output and low published in-state tuition, and Gainesville is one of them. If cohort size and an established placement network matter to you, that combination is the argument for it.

In-State Tuition

$4,477

Out-Of-State

$25,694

DNP Awards

92

UG Completion

91%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

FSU is built for nurses who intend to keep working. Every track runs online, full or part-time, with only minimal on-campus skill practice and testing, though the college is candid that most courses carry a synchronous Zoom component, so evenings are not entirely yours. The executive health systems leadership track is fully online and part-time, and admits experienced nurses holding an MSN, a qualifying master’s, or in some cases a BSN. There is also a post-master’s route for acute care practitioners moving into adult-gerontology. One provision is unique here: a serving preceptor can claim a waiver of six credit hours for every 300 hours of precepting completed, which turns work you may already be doing into progress on the degree.

In-State Tuition

$4,640

Out-Of-State

$19,084

DNP Awards

27

UG Completion

86%

• Cheapest campus-based
• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

Florida Atlantic splits the DNP by entry credential. The full-time BSN-to-DNP prepares family, adult-gerontology primary care and psychiatric-mental health practitioners. The post-master’s route runs part-time over eight semesters for APRNs who are already certified, covering leadership, clinical scholarship, nursing theory, cultural competence, population health, strategic healthcare management and evaluation. A minimum of 1,000 clinical hours culminates in a project mapped to the 2021 AACN Essentials. Delivery is four separate choices rather than one: live on campus, synchronous over Zoom, fully asynchronous, or hybrid. That matters because most schools offer a single mode and call it flexible. Its college also charges a per-credit fee on nursing courses on top of tuition, so the published annual rate is not the whole bill.

In-State Tuition

$2,522

Out-Of-State

$14,374

DNP Awards

32

UG Completion

63%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

UCF states its executive track precisely: 42 credit hours of online asynchronous instruction, two required virtual DNP intensives a year, and 1,000 post-baccalaureate clinical hours. It also admits the thing most online programs gloss: the DNP project itself requires in-person clinical hours, so fully remote it is not. There is deliberately no full-time option for the nurse executive track, because the college assumes those students are already working full-time, which tells you exactly who it is designed for: serving managers, not people stepping out of practice. The family and adult-gerontology acute care tracks run mixed-mode with reduced on-campus seat time, a middle setting between the executive track’s near-total flexibility and a conventional campus program. The family practitioner route runs 73 credits against the executive track’s 42, so the track page is what to compare on rather than the program page.

In-State Tuition

$4,478

Out-Of-State

$19,810

DNP Awards

65

UG Completion

78%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

USF attaches a geographic condition to the degree that decides it for a lot of applicants: a minimum of 31 credits including at least eight practicum credits and four project credits, all of which must be completed in Florida. If you do not live there, that decides it before anything else does. The plan is lock-step, so the sequence is fixed rather than assembled around your schedule, which is predictable if you want a known end date, inflexible if your work pattern shifts. Practicum hours directly support the DNP project and can include direct patient care or immersion experiences approved by the program director. Both entry routes are open, and the adult-gerontology acute care concentration evaluates prior clinical experience case by case rather than against a fixed threshold.

In-State Tuition

$4,559

Out-Of-State

$15,473

DNP Awards

87

UG Completion

77%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

Charlotte runs two concentrations that could hardly be less alike. The post-master’s DNP prepares health-system and organizational leaders, explicitly including non-APRNs alongside practicing APRNs, to lead through translating evidence into practice, so a nurse manager without a clinical master’s is not excluded. The BSN-to-DNP in nurse anesthesia across the lifespan is the opposite proposition: taught on campus in partnership with Atrium Health, a hospital-embedded clinical residency rather than something to fit around a job. Clinical hours are shaped to your primary area of interest and the specialty competencies. The university also warns that some states do not permit its online delivery or out-of-state practicum, which is the licensure question to settle before applying. It also publishes its student handbook openly, which is the fastest way to see what the program expects of you before you apply.

In-State Tuition

$3,812

Out-Of-State

$19,065

DNP Awards

25

UG Completion

69%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

LSU’s health sciences center publishes its DNP as course tables rather than description, including a distinct adult-gerontology acute care sequence, so what the program emphasizes has to be read off the curriculum rather than a summary. One thing it does state plainly is that clinical hours and the three Ps, meaning advanced pathophysiology, pharmacology and physical assessment, are verified at admission rather than assumed, so applicants carrying credits from an earlier master’s should expect them to be audited before enrollment rather than after. This is a small, health-professions-only campus of 2,750 people, which means a cohort you will recognize rather than a faculty you queue to see.

In-State Tuition

$7,020

Out-Of-State

$15,495

DNP Awards

71

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (research)

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.

In-State Tuition

$6,672

Out-Of-State

$18,972

DNP Awards

24

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

North Florida frames its DNP for nurses ready to move from clinical expertise into influence, with emphasis on evidence-based practice, organizational and systems leadership, health policy and quality improvement rather than on adding a clinical population. It is delivered fully online with faculty engagement built into each course, and the post-MSN track admits twice a year, autumn and spring. One change is worth planning around: from autumn 2026 the post-MSN route requires full-time enrollment at nine credit hours a term, closing the part-time option many working nurses rely on. Anyone weighing this program should confirm which cohort they would join, because the version described today and the version starting in 2026 ask for different things. Its nurse anesthesia track is accredited by the COA rather than CCNE, a separate accreditation claim from the rest of the degree.

In-State Tuition

$3,996

Out-Of-State

$16,799

DNP Awards

63

UG Completion

69%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

FIU’s DNP leans psychiatric, and its practice sites make that plain: community mental health centers, crisis centers, psychiatric clinics and hospital units, correctional health, and private practice. Correctional health in particular is a setting few nursing schools name, and the placements you do are what you end up competent to handle afterwards. The provision worth knowing if you live anywhere else in Florida is that students in the online specialties may complete clinicals beyond the university’s own service area of Monroe, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. Several Florida publics hold their students inside a catchment. This one says in writing that it does not. Its college publishes a plan of study per specialty rather than one for the degree.

In-State Tuition

$4,721

Out-Of-State

$16,529

DNP Awards

81

UG Completion

74%

• Joint-highest completion
• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

Carolina asks you to choose a pathway before a specialty, and publishes three: health care leadership and administration, BSN-to-DNP nurse practitioner areas, and MSN-to-DNP. The coursework spans advanced practice, leadership and practice-based inquiry, ending in an evidence-based DNP project, with 1,000 practice hours inside the credit total. What sets it apart is that the specialty entry expectations are written down rather than implied: pediatric primary care wants roughly six months of full-time RN work in a neonatal, pediatric or child-serving community setting, and the psychiatric-mental health track wants six months in acute or community psychiatric and substance-use care. If you are switching populations rather than deepening the one you know, those are the sentences that decide whether to apply now or work another year first.

In-State Tuition

$7,019

Out-Of-State

$39,228

DNP Awards

35

UG Completion

91%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

Wilmington offers five concentrations delivered in a flexible asynchronous online format, and asynchronous here means no fixed class times at all, which is rarer than the word "online" usually implies and the single reason to look here if your roster moves. The family nurse practitioner concentration is aimed at nurses seeking advanced practice skills to deliver primary care across the lifespan, while the nurse executive leadership concentration is 36 credit hours, completable in as few as five semesters, and written for nurses already on a leadership trajectory rather than those hoping to start one. Overall completion runs anywhere from five to fourteen semesters depending on how heavily you study, which the school publishes rather than burying.

In-State Tuition

$4,443

Out-Of-State

$21,318

DNP Awards

61

UG Completion

71%

• Narrowest residency penalty
• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

UAMS is really three programs with different audiences. The nurse anesthesia route is a 36-month, full-time, entry-to-practice plan of study that takes BSN- or master’s-prepared critical-care nurses to CRNA. Full-time means what it says, so it is not a degree to fit around a roster. The post-master’s leadership track is scoped to applicants already holding a master’s in nursing administration or an APRN specialty. And nurses already licensed and certified as an APRN can use a post-BSN or post-master’s certificate track to add a second population focus, which is a narrower and more useful thing than a general doctorate if you want to practice with a different patient group. Admission runs twice a year: 1 March for August, 1 September for January.

In-State Tuition

$7,362

Out-Of-State

$12,990

DNP Awards

46

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

East Carolina runs five DNP concentrations: nurse anesthesia, adult-gerontology primary care, family nurse practitioner, nursing leadership, and a post-master’s route for APRNs who are already certified. That post-master’s route is 36 credit hours, split 18 core, 9 project and 9 electives, and it is part-time by design so you can keep working through it. Leadership is part-time only, with a single 1 May deadline and a fall start. The detail to know before you apply is that the clinical hours attached to your DNP project are not a fixed number. ECU calculates them from the hours you already logged during your master’s, so two students in one cohort can owe different amounts. You will need an unrestricted RN license in North Carolina or a compact state, and the GRE is waived if you hold an MSN.

In-State Tuition

$4,452

Out-Of-State

$20,729

DNP Awards

81

UG Completion

63%

• Lowest published rate
• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

Western Carolina builds its DNP on a master’s you already hold, and that makes the arithmetic unusually clean: 34 credit hours, and 1,000 clinical practice hours of which 500 transfer straight across from your MSN. The half you still owe is the half the program actually teaches. It runs fully online. The published in-state rate is the lowest of any accredited DNP institution in this dataset, and the out-of-state figure is lower than what 287 of the 304 institutions publishing a rate charge their own residents, so residency barely moves the number here. A rate that far below everyone else is worth confirming with the bursar before you build a budget on it.

In-State Tuition

$1,000

Out-Of-State

$5,000

DNP Awards

17

UG Completion

60%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

Gulf Coast publishes four separate DNP curricula and the credit totals are nothing alike, so the number that matters is the one attached to your entry point. The BSN-to-DNP nurse practitioner route is 81 credits, full time or part time. If you already hold an MSN with an advanced practice focus, you finish in 36 credits over five full-time semesters. Nurse anesthesiology is a different proposition again: 112 credits across nine continuous full-time semesters, 36 months end to end, and it wants a full year of ICU experience behind you before classes start in the summer. CRNAs who already hold a master’s take a 37-credit version over six part-time semesters instead. Anesthesiology is also the one route with a standing campus commitment, once a week from that first summer through to graduation.

In-State Tuition

$4,191

Out-Of-State

$22,328

DNP Awards

32

UG Completion

57%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

Fullerton asks for one commitment that decides it for a lot of working nurses: students must be available all day on Fridays for the entirety of the program. The format is hybrid, on-site and online, so that standing Friday is the practical constraint to weigh against a rota before anything else. Admission requires a master’s from a regionally accredited institution and a nursing specialty, and the indirect care track narrows that further to a master’s in nursing leadership, administration, education or community health, so this is a doctorate for nurses who have already specialized. Clinical hours can be completed at your own place of employment. The program has been run by the CSUF School of Nursing since 2023, its predecessor consortium having graduated a final cohort in 2024.

In-State Tuition

$6,084

Out-Of-State

$18,684

DNP Awards

51

UG Completion

70%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (research)
• Offered online

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 credentialling, 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.

In-State Tuition

$8,580

Out-Of-State

$24,189

DNP Awards

24

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

Greensboro publishes the arithmetic that decides whether a post-master’s doctorate is worth starting. The post-master’s DNP runs 30 credits and 1,000 practicum hours, and the hours you already logged in a master’s count toward that total, which is how a full-time student finishes in four semesters, roughly 15 months, entering in the fall and ending the fall after. If your master’s practicum fell short, the school says you make up the difference here rather than waving it through. The nurse anesthesia concentration is a different commitment: 107 credits across nine semesters and 36 months, a May start, and graduate and clinical clock hours averaging about 35 a week. In-state tuition sits in the cheapest few percent of the programs on this site.

In-State Tuition

$4,422

Out-Of-State

$20,773

DNP Awards

57

UG Completion

56%

• Most tracks in one filing
• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

4 DNP tracks at this institution, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing administration, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.

Oklahoma publishes the conversion most schools leave implicit: one credit hour of practice inquiry equals 64 clinical hours. That single line lets you work out what a given semester actually costs you in time rather than in credits. The degree spans 35 to 51 credit hours and 1,000 to 1,280 clinical hours depending on route, split into 31 didactic credits and 20 clinical. For nurse anesthesia from a BSN the college describes its strongest applicants rather than just its minimum: a grade point average above 3.5, at least two years of critical care, and demonstrated unit leadership through charge roles, preceptorships or governance. The interview runs two to three hours.

In-State Tuition

$5,539

Out-Of-State

$23,328

DNP Awards

16

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (research)

Memphis runs one of the most concentrated nursing doctorates in the country. Set doctoral output against the size of the institution and this campus ranks fourth of the 307 accredited institutions on this site, because eighty-four DNP graduates a year come out of a place enrolling barely three thousand people, nearly all of them in health professions. There is no undergraduate arts college here for nursing to sit beside. For a working nurse that usually shows up as faculty who teach at doctoral level as their day job rather than as an overload, and as a cohort big enough that courses run when the catalog says they will. Requirements are published per track rather than for the degree, so the track page is where the credit and practicum totals live.

In-State Tuition

$9,796

Out-Of-State

$22,454

DNP Awards

84

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

Madison solves the problem that stalls more doctorates than coursework does. It runs a Clinical Placement Unit whose job is to secure placements in your population area and make sure the hours needed for certification and graduation are actually obtained, because staff and faculty find the practicum so you do not have to. In a market where preceptors are scarce, that is worth more than any figure on this card, and it is the opposite of schools that leave students to source their own. The scholarly project is organized around the population you intend to serve, whether pediatric primary care, psychiatric-mental health or adult-gerontology acute care. Graduates are prepared for hospitals, intensive care, emergency departments, urgent care, surgical suites and specialty settings. It also caps waivable credits at 18, which sets a floor on how much coursework an MSN-prepared applicant still has to take.

In-State Tuition

$10,006

Out-Of-State

$40,506

DNP Awards

36

UG Completion

90%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (research)

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.

In-State Tuition

$10,038

Out-Of-State

$37,422

DNP Awards

44

• Largest public output
• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

Maryland’s scale buys specialization most schools cannot staff. Alongside family practice it runs acute care pediatrics and neonatal tracks aimed at genuinely different jobs: acute care pediatric practitioners are hired into pediatric intensive care, inpatient pediatrics, cardiovascular surgery units and emergency departments, while neonatal practitioners go into level II, III and IV neonatal intensive care. The family track deliberately spreads practicum hours across women’s health, adult, geriatric and pediatric populations rather than concentrating them. The school also names the background it wants: emergency, pediatric cardiac surgery ICU, neurosurgical ICU or hematology-oncology experience. That is a clearer signal than a GPA floor. A Conway Scholarship covers half of in-state tuition, fees and books for those who qualify. Its pathways page publishes 37 credits for a nurse already practicing as an APRN against 80 to 93 for bachelor’s entry.

In-State Tuition

$10,024

Out-Of-State

$41,197

DNP Awards

156

• Same rate in any state
• CCNE-accredited
• Private for-profit
• Doctorate (research)
• Offered online

Walden is the largest DNP program in the country and is explicit about the arithmetic that catches people out. Completion needs 1,000 post-BSN practicum hours with at least 400 at doctoral level, and a student admitted with fewer than 600 documented hours takes up to eight extra credits to close the gap, and one credit carries 80 practicum hours. Students already holding APRN licensure receive prior credit and complete at least 500. Coursework and the project run online on your own schedule, but the practicum happens in a physical healthcare setting, and the university runs a dedicated field office to help students find one. It also states what most online programs leave out: practicum brings travel, onboarding fees, per-quarter fees and liability insurance.

In-State Tuition

$10,542

Out-Of-State

$10,542

DNP Awards

304