Best Online PhD in Nursing Programs, Ranked for 2026

Top of this ranking on access, not research money. Every track runs online, part-time entry is open, and the per-credit rate sits eighth-lowest among the 41 programs here that publish one. What Buffalo wants back is your shifts.

Where it wins. Few programs here will take you straight from a BSN and let you go part time from home, and Early Assurance starts that clock while you're still a senior: finish the BSN, pass the NCLEX, enter the PhD the following fall with no gap year.

What you give up. Buffalo's own guidance is to keep outside work under 20 hours a week during coursework and dissertation, which is half a nursing job. Stretch that across a 4-to-7-year window with thin part-time scholarships and the math on staying at the bedside stops working.

Show up in Galveston for four or five days each August and that's the entire campus obligation. Sixty-nine credits at $392 puts the whole degree at $27,048, which few programs here approach.

Where it wins. Total tuition lands fifth lowest of the 36 online programs here where the number can be computed, and $18,912 under the page median. Four or five days on campus a year means one plane ticket, booked in August, for the whole degree.

What you give up. The part-time door only opens on the MSN side. Enter with a BSN and you're committed to nine full-time semesters, which is exactly the arrangement a working nurse came to this page to avoid.

The college's own reason for turning away F-1 students tells you what you need to know about campus time: the PhD carries too little in-person coursework to satisfy a student visa. For a nurse staying put, that is the selling point.

Where it wins. At $247 a credit it is the cheapest rate on this page, and even across 90 credits the tuition lands at $22,230, less than a quarter of what Rush charges for 67. Classes of four to six mean your advisor knows your name.

What you give up. Ninety credits ties North Dakota for the top of this page's range, so the cheap rate buys you more semesters of enrollment than anyone else here signs up for. No federal nursing research money sits behind the faculty.

Run the numbers and TWU wins on cost without asking you to move or take leave. Two campus days a year is the lightest annual obligation of any program here that requires you to show up at all.

Where it wins. Sixty credits at $323 apiece is $19,380 for the whole degree, the second-lowest full tuition bill on this page. TWU also awarded 19 PhDs, more than double what any other public university here graduated. Cheap and productive rarely travel together.

What you give up. There is no federal nursing research money behind the faculty, so your committee will be advising a study you built rather than folding you into one already funded, and the assistantship is something you apply for after you arrive.

The travel obligation here has an end date, which almost nothing else on this page can say. The intensives run until you make candidacy and then stop, so the flights are front-loaded into the coursework years instead of following you to the defense.

Where it wins. At $369.65 a credit, the post-master's 66 credits come to $24,397, roughly half what the same length costs at the $695 online median. The post-BSN 75-credit route lands at $27,724, still under what most programs charge for a shorter degree.

What you give up. Class meetings are synchronous and scheduled by the instructor, which is the hard part if you work nights, and the fellowship money advertised is competitive rather than promised to anyone who gets in.

IUP is one of four programs on this page that put the campus requirement at zero, and it's the one aimed squarely at nurse educators. Sixty credits at $516 lands at $30,960 for a doctorate you never travel for.

Where it wins. The DNP-to-PhD route is the real value: 24 transferred credits cut the degree to 36 hours, so a nurse who already holds the DNP pays about $18,576 in tuition and finishes coursework in eight semesters instead of eleven.

What you give up. Research here points at nursing education and faculty development, so a committee for a bench or biobehavioral question isn't in the building. Entry also starts at the master's, which closes the door on BSN nurses.

Coursework for the post-master's track runs online with no campus residency attached, and everyone here studies part time by design. The trade is that nobody will tell you when you finish.

Where it wins. Entry point decides the bill: 60 credits at $495.70 is $29,742 from a master's, while the bachelor's track's 90 credits runs $44,613. The Nurse Faculty Loan Program forgives up to 85% if you teach four years after.

What you give up. Length is set individually rather than published, so you're negotiating your own timeline with an advisor instead of following a cohort. Assistantships that waive tuition sit with the Graduate School, not the nursing college.

If your background isn't nursing, this is the program. Enrolled students have arrived from physical therapy, informatics, medical ethics and social work, and Mizzou does not require a prior nursing degree at all.

Where it wins. The Sinclair school holds $2.16 million in NINR awards across eight grants, which puts it among the thirteen online programs on this page carrying any federal nursing research money at all, and the coursework runs synchronously so you actually meet the faculty behind it.

What you give up. The April intensive is four days and it repeats every spring until you pass comps, on top of the three-day June start, so budget four or five trips to Columbia. Synchronous classes also mean live sessions your shift schedule has to bend around.

If you work nights, the word to look for is asynchronous, and UNLV is one of four programs on this page that actually delivers didactic coursework that way. You come to campus for orientation, then again to defend.

Where it wins. The Post-DNP track counts 18 units from your DNP and leaves 44 credits of core research coursework. At $383.25 a credit that works out to roughly $16,900 for a research doctorate, undercutting every other full degree priced on this page but one.

What you give up. Cohorts run around ten students, so the pool of faculty and peers working anywhere near your topic is thin, and the school has no NINR-funded studies for a dissertation to attach itself to.

One week in Tucson a year is the whole travel bill, which beats the programs that pull you back every semester. Arizona's problem is the calendar rather than the airport, because this degree runs longer than its published range suggests.

Where it wins. Fifteen NINR awards averaging just over $580,000 apiece means the faculty who staff your committee are running funded studies right now, and a dissertation that attaches to live work moves faster than one built from a standing start.

What you give up. The BSN route runs 79 credits on a full-time four-year plan, and the college's own average time to degree is 4.6 years, so budget for five RISE weeks and five years of tuition rather than three.

Rolling admission with start dates year-round and a decision as late as two weeks before the session opens: UT Tyler is built for the nurse who decides in March that this is the year, not the one who planned it last October.

Where it wins. Run the arithmetic and 72 credits from the BSN at $410 is $29,520, while the MSN route's 60 credits is $24,600. That's under a third of what the priciest program on this page charges, for the same dissertation at the end.

What you give up. The in-person workshops sit on Tyler's calendar rather than yours, so keep shift-swap room in reserve. And 72 credits from a BSN is twelve above the median here, roughly two extra semesters of tuition and time.

Come here for the money behind the faculty. CU Anschutz holds $17.7 million in NINR awards, more than the second and third holders on this page combined, and you'll pay for it in airfare.

Where it wins. That $17,683,141 is roughly a third of every NINR dollar held by the 48 programs here, and only 13 of them hold any at all. Sixty credits at $766 comes to $45,960, which is exactly the median total on this page.

What you give up. Three trips to Aurora a year across a three to four and a half year program is nine to fourteen flights, none of it in the tuition figure. The college awarded 43 DNPs to 3 PhDs.

Cheapest degree on this page and it isn't close. ECU also keeps the research practicums in your own community, so the only reason to fly to Greenville is the summer immersion, and that stops after year three.

Where it wins. Fifty-four credits at $277.06 comes to $14,961 for the whole degree, $4,419 under the next-cheapest program here and roughly a seventh of Rush's bill. Three summer immersions in Greenville is the entire travel obligation, and they land in the first three years.

What you give up. That $14,961 assumes you enter with an MSN. BSN entrants carry 72 to 84 hours, which at the same rate runs up to $23,273. The college awarded 81 DNPs against three PhDs, so its center of gravity is practice.

The reason to pick Barry is not the curriculum, it is the financing. Nothing else here pairs zero campus travel with a loan program that erases most of your balance if you go teach afterward.

Where it wins. Fifty credits, no on-campus intensive anywhere in the plan of study, and up to $40,000 a year through the Nurse Faculty Loan Program with 85% forgiven across four years of full-time teaching. Post-DNP entrants need only 30 credits. Over 16 years, 300-plus Barry graduates have used it.

What you give up. That forgiveness is a contract, not a gift: four years of full-time faculty work, and the last 15% stays yours either way. Barry also awards seven DNPs for every PhD, so research is the small side of this house.

Pick VCU if you want the research doctorate to be the main event rather than the small program down the hall from a large practice degree. Six PhDs and no DNPs is what the school's doctoral output actually looks like.

Where it wins. The 58-credit curriculum sits under the 60-credit median for online programs and 32 credits below the heaviest one on this page, and the eight-year completion window gives a working nurse room to stall a semester without losing the degree.

What you give up. Immersions come every semester, so the travel never tapers, and the assistantship that covers tuition demands 20 hours a week plus 9 credits, which is another way of saying you would have to quit nursing to get it.

Five days in Greeley the summer before coursework starts, and then the campus obligation is finished. Only a handful of programs here get the in-person requirement over with in a single visit, and that is UNC's whole case for a nurse three time zones away.

Where it wins. Colorado residents and out-of-state students pay the same $802, with no student or technology fees stacked on top, so 66 credits comes to a flat $52,932. UNC also holds $2.37 million in NINR funding, while 35 of the 48 programs here hold none.

What you give up. That $52,932 runs about $22,000 above what IUP charges for a nursing-education doctorate you also never move for, and nothing offsets the difference but federal loans.

Southern Miss converts the residency requirement into enrollment instead of travel, which is rare on this page. Read the fine print though, because the cheapest version of that bargain locks you into two straight years.

Where it wins. The curriculum is 48 credits from a master's, among the shortest here, and at $594 that's $28,512, roughly $17,400 under the median online total. You satisfy residency by staying enrolled, so no shift swaps and no plane tickets.

What you give up. Continuous enrollment is not a light load. The gentlest route is six credits a semester for four semesters running, with no term off, and the fastest is twelve credits twice, which no bedside schedule survives.

Built for nurses in rural and underserved places, and the NINR money means the faculty writing your committee letters are running funded studies rather than looking for one. The travel bill is what that costs you.

Where it wins. Federal nursing research money here runs to $7,666,072 across six awards, more than triple Mizzou's total and third-highest of any online program on this page. Health policy and health equity are named concentrations rather than something you assemble yourself.

What you give up. Two trips a year, every year: a week in Albuquerque each September plus a research conference. And BSN entrants add 18 bridge credits, pushing 87 credits at $628.22 to about $54,655.

KU wants two weeks on campus and then never again. Most programs here that require in-person time want it every single year, which across a three-to-four-year degree is the difference between two trips to Kansas City and four.

Where it wins. Two one-week summer intensives at the medical center are the entire residency, not an annual tax, and cohorts start in summer rather than fall. Sixty-five credits at $485.50 puts tuition at $31,558, the ninth-lowest rate of the 41 programs here that publish one.

What you give up. Coursework runs on regular synchronous web conferencing, so you are tied to live class times even though nothing is on campus. KU also awards 23 DNPs for every PhD, which keeps the doctoral research cohort and the committee bench small.

Georgia State breaks the campus time into two-day pieces, which is the difference between swapping a shift and requesting leave. For a nurse holding a full schedule, how the days get cut up matters as much as how many of them there are.

Where it wins. Every doctoral seat here is a research seat, since the college's doctoral output is eight PhDs and no DNPs, and you can stack a graduate certificate in public health or health literacy onto the 60 credits while enrolled instead of coming back for it later.

What you give up. Zero NINR dollars back this faculty, so your dissertation begins from a blank page instead of attaching to a study that is already funded, and the assistantships are described as limited rather than offered across the cohort.

Forty-six nursing PhDs awarded, more than the next two programs on this page combined, and four residencies that can be taken virtually. Walden is a graduation machine, and whether that reads as access or as volume depends on what you want the degree for.

Where it wins. Watch the unit: these are quarter hours, a smaller measure than the semester hours nearly everything else here counts in. The residencies also carry prices instead of hiding, $1,420 virtual or $1,520 in person, so the honest total lands past $55,700 against $50,020 of tuition.

What you give up. It's a for-profit with 49,000 students and no NINR money behind the faculty who'll sit on your committee, and the published window runs from 3.5 years to eight. Twenty-four of the 41 rated programs here charge less per credit.

UMSL buys you out of the airport and bills you for it. The format is 95% asynchronous with no campus residency, and 66 credits at $1,009 totals $66,594, sixth highest on this page.

Where it wins. Delivery is 95% asynchronous, the most explicit scheduling promise on this page, and the residency is three credits of supervised research with a faculty member rather than a week in Missouri. Rolling admission returns a decision inside four weeks.

What you give up. You pay $20,634 above the median total, at a public university, and three of those 66 credits go to the research residency, $3,027 worth. Living outside Missouri means clearing NC-SARA authorization first.

The semester intensives at ETSU are Zoom-attendable, which quietly removes the one thing that sinks most online nursing doctorates for a working nurse. You can finish this degree without buying a plane ticket.

Where it wins. Coursework is asynchronous and the two to three day intensive at the start of each semester can be attended on Zoom, so the travel line in your budget stays at zero while UNM students are booking a week in Albuquerque every year. Cohorts run five to seven.

What you give up. You pay for the convenience: $40,320 for 60 credits is about $25,000 more than ECU charges for its whole degree. Rural health and nursing education are the research lanes here, and the NINR ledger is empty.

WSU is the one place here where real research funding and a stay-home schedule show up in the same program. Thirteen programs on this page hold NINR money, and twelve of them will also make you fly somewhere.

Where it wins. Faculty hold $1,908,747 in NINR funding across nine awards, there are 24 graduate faculty for about 20 doctoral students, and 10 of those students are on assistantships. Half the cohort is funded, and none of it depends on you relocating to Spokane.

What you give up. The sticker is the problem. At $887.60 a credit over 72 credits the degree bills $63,907, and the published window runs three to six years, so the back half of that number arrives long after the enthusiasm has. The GPA floor is 3.5.

A mentor gets assigned before coursework starts, which moves the hardest part of a PhD, finding someone whose work you can attach yourself to, from your second year into the admissions process. The bill is the reason to hesitate.

Where it wins. Run the arithmetic the school splits across two pages: 67 credits at the $835 part-time in-state rate plus the $70 online fee comes to $60,635. A cohort of 10 to 12 means you are not competing with fifty classmates for that mentor's calendar.

What you give up. Living outside South Carolina costs $263 more per credit, which is $17,621 across the degree for a program you attend from your kitchen table, and the scholarships that do exist are need-based rather than guaranteed.

The label says online; the fine print says 2 to 4 days on campus every quarter, which is a trip more often than any semester-scheduled program here can ask. Loma Linda is a commuter doctorate for southern California, marketed nationally.

Where it wins. Tuition arrives as a published four-year schedule rather than a rate you have to multiply out: $20,080 in years one, two and four, $23,092 in year three, $83,332 total. NEXus membership also lets you take doctoral courses LLU doesn't teach from other Western Institute schools at a common price.

What you give up. 75 credits puts it in the top four on this page and 15 above the median, and the part-time route stretches to seven years, which means seven years of quarterly flights rather than three.

Six days on campus across the whole degree, three a year at two required intensives, is about as light as a campus obligation gets here. The venue alternates between Tuscaloosa and Huntsville, since two universities run this degree jointly.

Where it wins. Tuition holds flat at $500 a credit, so 63 credits is $31,500, roughly $14,500 below the median total for online programs here. The dissertation can be three manuscripts rather than a monograph, which means the work leaves you with publications.

What you give up. Entry is summer only, so missing April 1 costs a full year. And the Capstone College awarded 50 DNPs against 3 PhDs, which tells you where the doctoral attention goes.

Six days on campus across the entire degree is the whole in-person ask, and the joint UA and UAH structure puts two nursing faculties within reach of your committee. Cheap, light, and built around a summer cohort.

Where it wins. The intensive is three days a year and you only have to attend two of them, so the total campus obligation is six days. Sixty credits at $500 comes to $30,000, roughly a third of Rush's total and well below the middle of this page.

What you give up. Intensives alternate between the two partner campuses, so which airport you fly into changes year to year. The program runs 60 to 63 credits, which at $500 tops out at $31,500, and three PhDs came out of it against 28 DNPs.

One program on this page pays your tuition and this is it. It is also the only program here that forbids part-time study, so the money comes bolted to the thing a working nurse can least afford to give up.

Where it wins. Tuition is covered for up to four years against a degree published at three, so the funding outlasts the timeline instead of expiring underneath it. Faculty carry $1,126,670 in NINR awards across seven grants, and you are admitted only against a faculty member who already works in your area.

What you give up. Full-time only, weekly synchronous classes, and an admission gate that depends on someone on staff already studying your question. If your topic does not map onto work already underway at the school, the application stops there.

Few programs let you start in the month you decide to start. Eight-week courses with monthly entry points, plus up to half the degree transferable, make Liberty the low-friction option for a nurse who would rather not wait until August for a cohort.

Where it wins. The part-time rate is the one to notice: $695 a credit against $630 full-time, so 60 credits runs $41,700 at working-nurse pace and $37,800 at full speed, a $3,900 premium for the slower path. Military students pay $395 and finish at $23,700.

What you give up. The door opens only to MSN holders, and this is a nursing education doctorate rather than a nurse scientist pipeline, so a committee sitting on federal research dollars is not what you are buying.

Scheduling is the pitch to a working nurse here: 8-week courses with monthly start dates, and a catalog that puts no campus days on your calendar, though the catalog reserves the right for some courses to require meetings or travel.

Where it wins. Transfer credit is where the money is: up to half the 60 hours can come in, turning a $37,800 degree into roughly $18,900. Military nurses pay $395 a credit, $23,700 all in, which is $14,100 below the standard full-time rate.

What you give up. Part-time study costs more per credit than full-time, $695 against $630, so the flexible route carries a $3,900 penalty across 60 credits. Entry starts at the master's, and the cognate is leadership rather than clinical science.

The constraint at Catholic isn't travel, it's the clock. Courses run in seven and eight week sessions with live meetings, so the question is whether you can hold a fixed weekly hour against a rotating schedule.

Where it wins. Seven and eight week sessions let you take courses in sequence rather than stacked three deep, which is the difference between doable and not on nights. NURS 922D puts you in a working clinical or research setting, and candidacy comes with a five-year clock.

What you give up. At $1,505 a credit, Catholic is the third most expensive per credit of the 41 priced programs here. Ten programs on this page require 60 credits, and 60 at that rate is $90,300.

One August orientation in Pocatello at the start, and the rest of the degree comes to you. That is a lighter in-person load than most of this page carries, which makes the current pause on 2026-2027 admissions the frustrating part.

Where it wins. The single in-person requirement is the August orientation in your admission year, so after one trip everything else is online. Fifty-nine credits at $514.12 works out to $30,333, and ISU is the only university in Idaho offering a nursing doctorate at all.

What you give up. The catalog says the program is not accepting applications for 2026-2027, so this is a bookmark rather than a target. A 3.5 GPA floor is the highest anywhere on this page, and one PhD came out of the program.

Forty-five credits is the shortest curriculum on this page, and Endicott charges $1,133 for each one of them. You are buying time back rather than money, and the receipt reads $50,985.

Where it wins. No campus days at any point across the four to five years, part-time or full-time pacing, and a cohort model with individualized faculty advising through the dissertation. The 45-credit plan undercuts the next-shortest programs here by three credits.

What you give up. That $50,985 is more than two-thirds of the priced programs here charge for their entire and longer degrees, and financing runs through federal and private loans only, with no assistantship or stipend on the table.

For a nurse whose employer will not release three days a year, Mercer answers the only question that matters, and it answers it without asking you to fly anywhere. The price is what you trade for that answer.

Where it wins. No residency is built into the plan, the timeline is a fixed three years, and 58 credits sits under the 60-credit median for online programs. The Jonas Nurse Scholars cohort aims squarely at faculty work if that is the next job you want.

What you give up. At $1,224 a credit, 58 credits is $70,992 before the $204 per-term fees, roughly $30,700 more than the same 58 credits cost at the $695 online median, and Mercer cannot enroll residents of every state.

One day each fall and one each spring, after two in-person sessions in May and June at the start. That is a campus requirement you can cover with two shift swaps a year instead of a week of banked PTO.

Where it wins. You leave with a publication record rather than only a dissertation: a first-authored manuscript in a journal's hands before your qualifying exam, and a first-authored paper accepted before you defend, supported by faculty holding $1.4 million in NINR awards.

What you give up. Only 14 of the 41 rated programs here cost more per credit, and 55 credits still totals $46,475 out of pocket. Single-day obligations also mean eight round trips across four years, each one airfare and a hotel for one day of value.

Zero campus days, primarily asynchronous, and built for part time from the start. If your only real constraint is that you can't leave the floor, Wilkes is one of a small handful here that never asks you to.

Where it wins. You get a dissertation chairperson in NSG 615, the introductory seminar, instead of waiting until after comps. For an online part-timer who might otherwise go two years without a committee relationship, that scheduling decision matters more than any course on the list.

What you give up. Total tuition tops out at $51,935, about $6,000 above the median here, and you need a master's to get in. Wilkes awarded 2 PhDs against 23 DNPs, so the committee you join isn't sitting on federally funded studies.

Rush matches you to a faculty research mentor at the medical center before you're admitted, which answers the question every online PhD applicant should be asking and usually cannot get answered. Then it hands you the bill.

Where it wins. A cohort of eight, each one paired with a Rush University Medical Center mentor before admission, means you know whose study you're joining on the day you accept. Six PhDs came out of here, and full-tuition scholarships exist for eligible new admits.

What you give up. Sixty-seven credits at $1,493 is $100,031 at list price, second only to Duquesne on this page and nearly seven times ECU's total. Rush holds no NINR awards, and three summers in Chicago follow the orientation trip.

Adelphi sells the online PhD as a way to skip housing, meals, and travel, and that part holds up: no campus days, no GRE, and a May 1 deadline. The price is what you trade for the convenience.

Where it wins. Every credit points at a faculty career, since the single concentration is nursing education taught inside an NLN Center of Excellence. Adelphi also graduates more PhDs than DNPs, six to four, which almost no school here running both doctorates can say.

What you give up. At $1,900 a credit, Adelphi charges the second-highest rate on this page. Even at 45 credits, the shortest curriculum anyone here offers, that is $85,500, and the Nurse Faculty Loan Program that softens nursing-education debt closed to new borrowers in June 2025.

Fifty-one credits, and 39 for a DNP holder, against a 90-credit ceiling elsewhere on this page. UNCG's pitch is subtraction, and for someone paying by the credit hour and counting semesters against a work schedule, subtraction is the pitch that counts.

Where it wins. The campus visits carry a synchronous online alternative for anyone who cannot travel, which puts UNCG among the few where the in-person expectation is genuinely optional rather than merely infrequent, and the DNP-to-PhD waiver of up to 12 credits cuts the degree to 39.

What you give up. Two PhDs awarded against 57 DNPs tells you where the school's attention goes, and with no NINR money in the building, the study you write will be one you build yourself rather than one you join.

Six days on campus for the whole degree, three at a time, twice. Among the programs here that name an in-person requirement at all, almost none asks for less, and for a nurse in another state that is the entire decision.

Where it wins. Two three-day Summer Research Institutes is the complete travel bill, two long weekends spread across six years. Graduation also requires a published paper and a conference presentation, so you finish with evidence you can do the work, not just a bound dissertation.

What you give up. Post-BSN entrants add 12 master's-level credits before the 61-hour curriculum begins, so the real figure is 73 credits and about $58,619 at $803 each. Six years is also the longest flat estimate quoted on this page.

Duquesne is the most expensive program on this page by a wide margin, and part of what you're buying is two weeks in Dublin. Decide whether that's the degree you want before you start doing discount math.

Where it wins. Two tracks run the same courses at different speeds, six to ten credits a semester for three years or a flat six for four, so you pick the pace your unit can absorb. A DNP already in hand cuts it to 38 credits.

What you give up. Fifty-six credits at $1,918 is $107,408, the highest of the 36 totals that can be computed on this page. The best discount offered, 55%, brings it to about $48,334, still above the median, and it doesn't cover the Dublin course.

Widener wrote this degree for nurse educators and doesn't pretend otherwise: the research lanes are teaching science, and the school carries the NLN's only Center of Excellence for advancing the science of nursing education. Forty-eight credits, one residency.

Where it wins. Only Endicott asks for fewer credits than Widener's 48, the in-person obligation is a single brief residency in year two, and classes meet in the evening. Three intakes a year mean missing August costs you four months, not twelve.

What you give up. At $1,090 a credit those 48 credits total $52,320, more than Mizzou charges for 72. Admission wants a 3.5 GPA plus a reference from someone holding a research doctorate, hard to produce if you work in a hospital rather than a university.

Nova compresses its in-person demand into one trip a year to Fort Lauderdale and will take your application two weeks into August for a fall start. If your schedule is fixed and you decided late, look here first.

Where it wins. The Summer Institute runs two to five days each May or June and that is the whole travel obligation. Forty-nine credits at $993 lands the degree at $48,657, and only three programs on this page ask for fewer credit hours.

What you give up. Two courses carry 1-credit research intensives at 75 clock hours apiece, so $1,986 of tuition buys 150 hours of supervised work that the credit count never advertises. Entry is fall only and turns on an interview with the program director.

Ninety credits is the heaviest load among online programs, and UND makes no apology for it. What softens the travel is that the yearly intensive can be met at a regional research conference rather than in Grand Forks, so the trip doubles as a conference.

Where it wins. Everyone pays $911.98 a credit regardless of residency, so there is no out-of-state penalty stacked on top. Graduation also requires a competitive grant application, an article submitted to a refereed journal, and a public presentation, so you finish with a faculty CV rather than a diploma alone.

What you give up. Ninety credits at $911.98 works out to $82,078, and the synchronous block sits on Tuesdays from 11 to 2 or 3 to 6 Central, which means one weekday afternoon off every week for three years of coursework.

The travel comes before admission here, not after: a personal interview with a doctoral faculty member, at your expense. Clear that and the coursework runs in 8-week online sessions with nothing waiting on campus afterward.

Where it wins. 54 credits at $695 totals $37,530, fourteenth-lowest of the 36 programs here that publish both numbers, and every doctoral core course is built on one question, family and family-related research. Bring that question and you get a faculty already pointed at it.

What you give up. A 3.5 GPA floor matches the highest bar on this page, entry is master's-only, and the single-focus curriculum is a wall if your question sits outside families. The seven-year clock after quals bites part-timers hardest.

One trip to Milwaukee each May, and coursework that has historically clustered on Tuesdays. Marquette asks for one protected weekday rather than a scattered week, which is the schedule a charge nurse can actually negotiate.

Where it wins. The Nurse Faculty Loan Program repays 85% of program costs after four years teaching in a school of nursing. On the 57-credit post-master's route, 57 times $1,450 is $82,650, and 85% of that is roughly $70,000 back.

What you give up. Coming in with a BSN adds 18 credits, so 75 total and $108,750, more than Duquesne charges. Assistantships go to full-time students, which rules out the reader this page is written for, and the GPA floor is 3.4.

Out-of-state PhD students pay the Michigan in-state rate here, so the per-credit figure is identical whether you live in Detroit or Denver. If you already hold a DNP, the arithmetic gets considerably better.

Where it wins. The DNP-to-PhD track cuts the requirement from 60 credits to 48, which at $951.50 saves $11,418 and drops the total to $45,672. The in-person ask is one three-day Immersion Week a year, and where you live never changes what you pay.

What you give up. The MSN path still runs $57,090, nearly four times what ECU charges for a whole degree, and BSN entrants face 80 credits for $76,120. Two PhDs came out of Oakland against 28 DNPs, so the doctoral weight here sits on practice.