Online 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%

• 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

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)
• 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)
• 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%

• 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 (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
• 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

• 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%

• 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%

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

Utah publishes two MS-to-DNP timetables and what separates them is where you did your master’s. Come from another institution and it is 35 credit hours, five semesters full time starting in fall or seven part time starting in spring. Finish a master’s at Utah recently and the same degree is 30 credits, three semesters full time starting in summer. Either way the clinical requirement is 480 hours. The college counts every clinical, residency and practicum hour you earned during your MSN toward the 1,000 post-baccalaureate hours the degree is built on, so what you still owe depends on what you already banked rather than on a fixed number.

In-State Tuition

$8,461

Out-Of-State

$29,701

DNP Awards

91

UG Completion

65%

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

MUSC charges one of the ten highest published in-state graduate rates of any public university in this dataset, which inverts the usual reason to look at a state school. The gap between what residents and non-residents pay is also one of the narrower ones among publics here, so a South Carolina address buys you less than it usually would, and out-of-state applicants are closer to parity than they expect. It is a health-professions campus of about three thousand in Charleston, and federal records flag the DNP for distance study, so the program reaches well beyond the Lowcountry. It also confers doctorates at a high rate for its size, thirteenth of the 311 institutions in this dataset measured as awards against total enrollment, which says the nursing doctorate is central to that campus rather than one program among many.

In-State Tuition

$15,622

Out-Of-State

$29,030

DNP Awards

57

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

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

Cincinnati builds its DNP curriculum around evidence-based practice, quality improvement, policy, informatics and leadership, and its family track is explicitly aimed at both national certification exams, the ANCC’s FNP-BC and the AANP’s. The pediatric acute care programs prepare nurses for fast-paced clinical settings and family-centerd care. Two structural details are worth knowing before you plan around it. From spring 2027, advanced health assessment students must complete a three-day on-campus immersion and demonstrate competency before beginning practicum, which for a distance-flagged program means three days in Ohio. And each practicum requires at least two DNP project team meetings, so supervision is scheduled rather than left to you to arrange.

In-State Tuition

$11,685

Out-Of-State

$27,019

DNP Awards

32

UG Completion

75%

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

Reno’s school of nursing secures your clinical placements for you, which removes the single biggest obstacle in an online doctorate, and then adds the exception in a footnote: you place yourself for the residency component. Both halves matter, and the second is the one to plan around. The program is fully online and open nationwide. Two pathways run, one from a bachelor’s leading to clinical education leadership or nurse executive work, and one from a master’s for nurses already practicing as advanced practitioners or already prepared as educators. If you take the clinical nurse leader master’s here first, a number of its core courses transfer into the doctorate. In-state tuition sits in the lower fifth on this site.

In-State Tuition

$8,430

Out-Of-State

$26,572

DNP Awards

37

UG Completion

61%

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

Kansas sizes each DNP specialty separately and publishes the numbers next to each other, which makes the comparison unusually easy to make. The post-master’s completion route is 31 to 34 credits, online, two years of full-time study. Psychiatric mental health is 67 credits over three years and hybrid rather than fully online. Executive leadership sits between them at 63. All of them carry the same 1,000 practice hours. There is one application deadline for every specialty except nurse-midwifery, 1 June for a fall start, so the calendar is simpler here than at schools running rolling admission. Midwifery is also where the funding sits: the MIDWIVES KAN project offers up to $25,000 a year to full-time nurse-midwifery students from diverse backgrounds.

In-State Tuition

$10,968

Out-Of-State

$29,298

DNP Awards

36

UG Completion

69%

• CCNE-accredited
• Private nonprofit
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

Touro Nevada runs a leadership doctorate and does not pretend otherwise. Its 528 practicum hours are leadership-based and built to support the scholarly project rather than to deliver direct patient care. That is coherent for a post-master’s leadership degree, and worth checking against your board’s expectations if you need clinical hours for a certification. The pace is an explicit choice rather than a negotiation: an accelerated track of one year full-time, or a standard track of two years part-time. Coursework combines didactic and practicum work aimed at leading in varied practice settings, collaborating across professions to improve patient care, and building strategy in advanced practice areas. It suits a nurse already in or moving toward a management role.

In-State Tuition

$10,080

Out-Of-State

$10,080

DNP Awards

22

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

Northwestern State says it runs the only nurse anesthesia program in the University of Louisiana System, and that is the reason most applicants look here. The anesthesia concentration is full-time and built on simulation and clinical work aimed at surgical, trauma and pain management settings, so it is a route to CRNA rather than a general doctorate. The other two concentrations point elsewhere entirely. Executive leadership covers systems management, finance, policy and organizational leadership for nurses moving into administration. Educational leadership covers curriculum design, assessment and supervised teaching for nurses moving into faculty work. Those are three different jobs and the university keeps them apart rather than folding leadership coursework into a clinical track. In-state tuition is among the lowest of any public on this site.

In-State Tuition

$5,180

Out-Of-State

$15,968

DNP Awards

26

UG Completion

43%

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

Huntsville runs two ways in and they suit different people. The post-master’s route builds on advanced practice knowledge you already hold and is aimed at sharpening clinical or administrative work rather than starting it. The post-bachelor’s route carries you from a BSN through the MSN and on to the doctorate as one sequence rather than two applications. What decides whether the program fits a working nurse is the campus requirement, and Huntsville states it precisely instead of promising flexibility: coursework is distance-accessible, and you come to campus for one intensive conference every other year. Full-time and part-time are both open. Its doctoral output puts it in the upper third of accredited institutions nationally, so the cohort is real without being large.

In-State Tuition

$10,374

Out-Of-State

$24,650

DNP Awards

28

UG Completion

64%

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

Kentucky runs six specialties inside one BSN-to-DNP option and publishes a plan of study for each rather than one timetable for the degree. Full time is three years. If that will not fit around a roster there are five-year part-time plans and a modified four-year plan built specifically for nurses already working in direct care. Executive leadership sits apart from the clinical specialties with its own full- and part-time sequences. Your specialty decides your certification board as much as your coursework: family primary care goes to ANCC or AANP, both pediatric routes to the PNCB, and executive leadership to the ANCC nurse executive advanced exam or the AONE certified-in-executive-nursing-practice exam.

In-State Tuition

$12,109

Out-Of-State

$32,747

DNP Awards

36

UG Completion

71%

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

Southern Illinois Edwardsville quantifies the experience requirement instead of leaving it vague: a year of full-time work, or its part-time equivalent, which the school puts at 1,872 hours, completed before you start the first specialization clinical course. It also wants your registered nurse license current in the state where you intend to do the practicum, not wherever you happen to be licensed now. The post-master’s application asks for a personal statement naming a doctoral project idea that is patient or practice focused, so you are expected to arrive with a problem in mind rather than find one later. Priority deadlines run 1 February for summer, 1 June for fall and 1 November for spring, and every doctoral student attends an immersion in the first days of the fall semester.

In-State Tuition

$8,918

Out-Of-State

$8,918

DNP Awards

77

UG Completion

57%

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

South Alabama runs its DNP online, and the routes differ in length as much as in price. Enter with a BSN and you take the full 64 credit hours, MSN core and specialty included. Already practicing in an advanced role? The MSN-to-DNP route is 39 credits, because you take only the DNP core, project development and residency. Adding a new specialty on top of an MSN puts you back at 64. You get seven years either way, and the college wants the master’s portion finished in the first five. There is no dissertation. You complete an evidence-based project instead, and the residency behind it can be done in your own region rather than in Mobile. Two states are closed: the college is not accepting applications from South Dakota or New York.

In-State Tuition

$8,976

Out-Of-State

$17,952

DNP Awards

178

UG Completion

53%

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

Old Dominion publishes two numbers about teaching that most schools keep quiet. Ninety-eight percent of didactic courses are taught by full-time faculty rather than adjuncts, and clinical practicum supervision runs at one faculty member to six or eight students. Those figures decide what your week actually feels like, and they are more useful than any completion statistic. The doctorate comes in two specializations, advanced practice and nurse executive, and a nurse holding a master’s can enter either. Both run online with immersion experiences built in. In-state tuition sits in the lowest sixth on this site while the out-of-state rate is more than three times it, so residency matters a great deal here.

In-State Tuition

$7,800

Out-Of-State

$28,305

DNP Awards

49

UG Completion

46%

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

Amherst answers up front the question most online programs leave you to find out late: it cannot accept DNP students who live in Alabama, Minnesota, New York, Oregon or Washington. If you are in one of those five states, that settles it before you compare anything else. For everyone else the coursework runs entirely online, the clinical side is done through internships where you already are, and the degree ends in a project that puts research evidence to work in a practice setting you choose. The post-baccalaureate route concentrates on psychiatric mental health, so this is a doctorate pointed at one population rather than a general one. You can also take a master’s in nursing on the way through instead of finishing with nothing in between.

In-State Tuition

$17,006

Out-Of-State

$39,683

DNP Awards

34

UG Completion

83%

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

Jacksonville State audits your master’s hours before it admits you rather than after. If your MSN carries fewer than 500 clinical practicum hours you are admitted conditionally and referred to an advanced experiential clinical course, and the admissions committee runs a gap analysis to decide how many of those hours, between one and five, you need to reach 500 and move on to the residency courses. Both the family nurse practitioner and the adult-gerontology acute care tracks then carry 700 clinical hours of their own, split between simulation and direct patient care. Entry wants a 3.0 GPA, taken on either your whole baccalaureate nursing program or its last 60 hours, whichever is higher.

In-State Tuition

$10,440

Out-Of-State

$20,880

DNP Awards

31

UG Completion

55%