Online is not the same as never travelling. These are the programs that confirm no residency, and the ones that quietly require one are excluded.
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| # | School | Credits | Ends | Format | Tuition | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Radford VA | 42 | Applied project | Online | $8,528 | 98.9 |
| 2 | Old Dominion VA | 42 | Online | $7,800 | 96.7 | |
| 3 | Indiana State IN | 37 | Applied project | Online | $9,978 | 94.6 |
| 4 | Chatham PA | 36 | Applied project | Online | $43,518 | 92.4 |
| 5 | MCPHS MA | 36 | Online | $39,240 | 90.2 | |
| 6 | Touro Worldwide CA | 48 | Applied project | Online | $14,440 | 88 |
| 7 | Purdue Global IN | Applied project | Online | $10,080 | 85.9 | |
| 8 | Bay Path MA | 48 | Applied project | Online | $37,972 | 83.7 |
| 9 | Jefferson PA | 43 | Online | $46,175 | 81.5 | |
| 10 | Liberty VA | 60 | Applied project | Online | $15,297 | 79.3 |
| 11 | Lenoir-Rhyne NC | 48 | Applied project | Online | $31,000 | 77.2 |
| 12 | Drexel PA | Online | $60,042 | 72.8 | ||
| 13 | Arcadia PA | Applied project | Online | $48,760 | 70.7 | |
| 14 | U of the Pacific CA | Online | $56,140 | 66.3 | ||
| 15 | Campbell NC | 54 | Applied project | Online | $38,880 | 64.1 |
| 16 | Bridgeport CT | Dissertation | Online | $32,860 | 62 | |
| 17 | ATSU MO | 70 | Applied project | Online | 57.6 |
Score is the program's position on the national ranking, shown so you can see where a program sits overall as well as on this cut. A blank cell means the school does not publish that figure.
#1 Score 98.9
Doctor of Health Sciences (D.H.Sc.) · Radford, VA · Public
Radford publishes the degree as offered 100% online across seven sequential semesters, with no residency anywhere in the requirements. At two courses a term it is also the lightest published load on this page, which is the other half of what makes a degree survivable while you work full time.
#2 Score 96.7
Doctor of Health Sciences (DHSc) · Norfolk, VA · Public
Every one of the 14 courses is taught online, and Old Dominion states the reason plainly: so students can earn the degree while balancing work and other responsibilities. Three credits per course across three years, evenly spread, with nothing on campus at any point. Of the fully remote options here it is also the cheapest, being a public university.
#3 Score 94.6
Doctor of Health Science in Healthcare Leadership (DHSc) · Terre Haute, IN · Public
Indiana State answers the question directly rather than leaving you to infer it: all courses run through Indiana State Online and on-campus visits are not required. Five start dates a year on eight and sixteen week terms makes it the easiest here to stop and restart around work.
View Indiana State's Doctor of Health Science in Healthcare Leadership Program
#4 Score 92.4
Doctor of Health Science (DHSc) · Pittsburgh, PA · Private
Fully online and part-time by design, finished in four or five terms across 16 to 20 months, with no residency in the published requirements. Chatham's constraint is the calendar rather than the map: a single fall intake each year. For someone whose objection to a doctorate is the travel rather than the time, this is the shortest route on this page.
#5 Score 90.2
Doctor of Health Sciences (DHSc) · Boston, MA · Private
Online and part-time across six semesters at 36 credits, with no campus time in the published requirements and Fall and Spring intakes. MCPHS built the load for people who intend to keep practising, so the remote delivery is matched by a light two-course rhythm rather than remote delivery of a heavy programme, which is the combination that actually makes a doctorate survivable alongside shifts.
#6 Score 88
Doctor of Health Science (DHSc) · Los Alamitos, CA · Private
100% online with no residency required, in eight-week sessions with six start dates a year, which is the loosest calendar of anything on this page. Touro also publishes no GRE or GMAT requirement. The entry cost is academic instead: a master's and a cumulative 3.4, the highest published GPA floor on the site.
#7 Score 85.9
Doctor of Health Science (DHSc) · West Lafayette, IN · Public
The most explicit statement on this page: complete all of your courses online with no residency requirement. Purdue Global pairs that with multiple start dates through the year and up to 28 transferable elective credits, so the degree can be both fully remote and materially shorter than its nominal length if you arrive with relevant graduate credit.
#8 Score 83.7
Doctor of Health Science (DHSc) · Longmeadow, MA · Private
Asked whether the programme is offered online, Bay Path answers that the course schedule is 100% online, taught in a small and interactive community, and no residency appears anywhere in its published requirements. Two intakes a year, January and September, across 48 credits and 16 courses, with 14 concentration tracks deciding what those courses actually are.
#9 Score 81.5
Doctor of Health Science (DHSc) · Philadelphia, PA · Private
Jefferson lists the format as online and describes the programme as fully online for working healthcare professionals, across 43 credits and three to four years, with no residency in the requirements. Note that Jefferson runs a second DHSc in its College of Population Health which is hybrid and requires six in-person residencies, so confirm which of the two you are applying to.
#10 Score 79.3
Doctor of Health Sciences (DHSc) · Lynchburg, VA · Private
100% online in eight-week courses, with full-semester sub-terms also available each semester and no residency published. Liberty's transfer policy affects the remote question indirectly but substantially: taking up to half the degree total from credit you already hold means fewer terms enrolled, whether or not any of them would have required travel.
#11 Score 77.2
Doctor of Health Science (DHSc) · Hickory, NC · Private
Forty-eight credit hours delivered online, ending in an applied research project, with a master's and a 3.0 required. Read the format language before counting on zero travel: Lenoir-Rhyne describes the programme as combining online learning with the engagement of a traditional residential experience, and does not define that anywhere on the programme page.
#12 Score 72.8
Doctor of Health Science (DHSc) · Philadelphia, PA · Private
Drexel lists the degree as online, including through a separate online campus with its own page, and publishes a three to five year window. It does not publish a credit count, a capstone type or an explicit residency statement, and the multiple listings do not obviously describe the same offering. Confirm which version you would be enrolled in before treating the remote delivery as settled.
#13 Score 70.7
Doctor of Health Science (DHSc) · Glenside, PA · Private
Arcadia runs asynchronous coursework with synchronous advising touchpoints, and publishes no residency requirement. That phrasing is more precise than most schools manage: you study on your own clock but there are scheduled conversations with faculty rather than pure self-direction. What Arcadia does not publish is credits, length or start dates, so the travel question is settled here while the rest is not.
#14 Score 66.3
Doctor of Health Science (DHSc) · Stockton, CA · Private
Delivered online through the School of Health Sciences, with technical standards written for remote study and six credits a term counting as full-time. Pacific's gate is entry rather than geography: it wants a master's or doctorate from an accredited clinical health science programme plus a 3.0 across all post-secondary work, which is narrower than anything else on this page.
#15 Score 64.1
Doctor of Health Sciences (DHSc) · Buies Creek, NC · Private
Campbell answers the campus question outright rather than by omission: no, the DHSc degree is a 100% online programme. Courses run in accelerated eight-week terms across 54 credit hours and three years, so it is one of the longer fully remote options but moves in short bursts. A single fall intake, with applications closing in mid-July.
#16 Score 62
Doctor of Health Sciences (DHSc) · Bridgeport, CT · Private
All coursework completed entirely online across three start dates a year, and Bridgeport says you can finish in just over three years. It is the only program on this page that ends in a full dissertation, so the remote part is the coursework, not the research.
#17 Score 57.6
Doctor of Health Sciences (DHSc) · Kirksville, MO · Private
Online with four start dates a year, and no campus residency in the published requirements. ATSU produces more DHSc graduates a year than any other program here, which is worth weighing if you want a cohort and an alumni network rather than just a credential.
Every program on this page is online. So is every program excluded from it. The difference is that these ones publish, or their format makes plain, that you will never be asked to travel, while the excluded ones attach a residency to an otherwise remote degree and rarely put it next to the tuition figure.
The excluded residencies are not onerous in themselves. New Haven opens with a two-day weekend. UIndy requires a dissertation prep session in year two. Nova asks for a one-week institute attended twice. MGH Institute expects you once, at commencement. None of that is a relocation. All of it is flights, hotels and time off that never appears in a cost comparison, and for a clinician covering shifts it is a real constraint rather than a rounding error.
What this page cannot tell you is whether a program with no published residency has no residency at all. Several schools here say very little about format. Absence of a stated requirement is weaker evidence than an explicit no, and the programs that answer the question directly, Campbell and Indiana State among them, deserve credit for it.
Checking rather than assuming applies to the school as much as to the schedule, and the Education Department's overview of accreditation explains that it recognizes accrediting agencies rather than accrediting institutions or programs itself, so look up who accredits a program before you take its claims at face value.
Staying home doesn't change what you write at the end, and a scoping review of doctoral nursing programs found that research doctorates mostly end in a dissertation while practice doctorates mostly end in quality improvement projects and the translation of evidence into practice.