Compare NCLEX pass rates, tuition, program length, and outcomes for every accredited Florida LPN program.
Demand for LPNs in Florida continues to rise, but net prices across the state's programs range from $804 to $6,440 per year after aid, making the cost-quality trade-off central when evaluating affordable LPN programs. All programs on this list are campus-based, though some incorporate hybrid online components; the ranking weighs affordability alongside long-term earnings. Top performers like North Florida College and Chipola College combine low net prices with strong post-graduation wages. Florida's 2024 statewide NCLEX-PN pass rate of 80.8% lags behind the national average, so program choice directly affects your odds of licensure.
This list favors schools where affordable net price and post-completion earnings align, so students can compare options by financial payoff as well as fit. The programs range from urban Miami clinical training to smaller rural Florida cohorts, with several offering dedicated pathways into RN education.
| Rank | School | Location | Net price | Best for | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | South Florida State College | Avon Park, FL | $4,000/yr (est. net price) | Rural students needing flexible evening courses | |
South Florida State College's practical nursing certificate is a one-year college credit program with small class sizes and clinical rotations in hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics. It is designed for students in Highlands, DeSoto, and Hardee counties who want to sit for the NCLEX-PN without leaving south-central Florida. Evening and flexible scheduling options make it a practical fit for working students.
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| #2 | Miami Dade College | Miami, FL | $3,000 – $10,000/yr (est.) | Urban Miami students seeking diverse clinical sites | |
Miami Dade College's LPN career technical certificate is a one-year program at the Medical Campus, placing students in Miami-Dade County's diverse clinical settings. The program is approved by the Florida Board of Nursing and is a candidate for ACEN accreditation. Students who want to continue can move into the college's broader nursing ecosystem, including RN and BSN pathways. ACEN accredited
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| #3 | Indian River State College | Fort Pierce, FL | ~$4,000/yr (est.) | Treasure Coast students wanting simulated clinical training | |
Indian River State College blends lecture, lab, and clinical work in a 1,350-clock-hour practical nursing program that takes about 18 months to complete. Students train at the Pruitt Campus simulation center and regional clinical sites, with HESI A2 testing folded into the application fee. The certificate leads to NCLEX-PN eligibility and provides a structured foundation for nursing career progression.
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| #4 | Gulf Coast State College | Panama City, FL | ~$5,000/yr (est.) | ||
Gulf Coast State College's 45-week practical nurse certificate is offered at the Gulf/Franklin Campus, making it a direct option for students in Gulf and Franklin counties and surrounding coastal areas. Small cohorts support close clinical relationships with local employers. The program pairs low in-state tuition with personalized faculty support and NCLEX-PN preparation.
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| #5 | Palm Beach State College | Lake Worth, FL | $3,000 – $11,000/yr (est.) | ||
Palm Beach State College offers a one-year, full-time practical nursing career certificate at its Lake Worth campus, with clinical training at local healthcare facilities. The curriculum covers medical-surgical, pharmacology, geriatric, and pediatric nursing. Graduates can move into the college's Associate in Science in Nursing, and the program is approved by the Florida Board of Nursing.
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| #6 | Pasco-Hernando State College | New Port Richey, FL | $5,000 – $10,000/yr (est.) | ||
Pasco-Hernando State College's practical nursing program uses limited-access cohorts of 36 students per term to preserve personalized instruction and clinical placements in the Pasco-Hernando area. Applicants complete TEAS testing, a background check, and drug screening. The college's Money-Back Guarantee offers a tuition refund if graduates are not employed within six months, a distinctive workforce signal.
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| #7 | Saint Johns River State College | Palatka, FL | ~$6,000/yr (est.) | ||
Saint Johns River State College delivers its practical nursing program at both Palatka and Orange Park campuses, with clinical rotations throughout the tri-county area. Classes run Monday through Thursday, and the program has posted strong licensure results, including a 100 percent NCLEX pass rate in 2024. Students can enter in fall or spring through separate campus-specific application windows.
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| #8 | Eastern Florida State College | Melbourne, FL | $5,000 – $10,000/yr (est.) | ||
Eastern Florida State College's 12-month practical nursing certificate is based at the Melbourne campus and uses a state-of-the-art simulation lab plus clinical experience in the Space Coast region. The program is affordable, with total tuition around $4,500, and includes a Transition to RN pathway. A limited-access application closes September 1 for January starts.
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| #9 | Florida State College at Jacksonville | Jacksonville, FL | under $5,000/yr (est.) | ||
Florida State College at Jacksonville offers a practical nursing career certificate with three start dates each year and 1,350 clock hours of combined classroom, lab, and clinical education. The program reports a 94 percent NCLEX-PN pass rate and has a built-in bridge pathway to the Associate in Science in Nursing. Admission is limited access and requires the HESI A2 exam.
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| #10 | Santa Fe College | Gainesville, FL | ~$11,000/yr (est.) | ||
Santa Fe College's practical nursing certificate is a 12-month, 1,350-contact-hour program with clinical rotations at major Gainesville-area hospitals, including Shands at UF and North Florida Regional Medical Center. The program splits instruction about evenly between classroom and clinical settings and is ACEN accredited and Florida Board of Nursing approved. It also offers support for military-connected students and strong employer partnerships. ACEN accredited
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Every metric in our ranking comes from public data sources you can verify yourself. We pull from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). These datasets track things like what students actually pay, how much they earn after leaving school, and whether they complete their programs. Using federal data keeps the comparison fair and consistent across every school.
Our composite score balances cost and outcomes equally. Five factors drive the ranking:
Programs that keep costs low and deliver solid earnings and completion rates rise to the top. Our affordable filter explicitly rewards schools that combine lower net prices with strong outcomes, so you won’t see high-cost programs dominating the list just because their graduates earn more.
Two numbers warrant a closer look. First, the graduation rate: since IPEDS can’t isolate each program, this figure reflects the entire college. A school with many part-time or transfer students may show a lower rate even if the LPN track performs well. Second, net price is an institutional average after aid, not a guarantee of your actual cost. Use it as a realistic baseline, then consult the school’s net price calculator for a personalized estimate. These data points work best when you compare them side by side, watching how earnings and debt move together. That’s exactly what the ranking does.
Before diving into the rankings, here are the headline numbers that define Florida's licensed practical nursing education landscape. These figures are drawn from the 10 schools in our analysis and reflect recent data on cost, time commitment, and outcomes.
Understanding the true cost of an LPN program means looking beyond sticker price. Net price, shown below, is the amount students actually pay after grants and scholarships, calculated as a school-wide average. For aspiring LPNs in Florida, community colleges are often the most affordable path: three schools stand out with net prices under $2,000 per year: North Florida College ($804), Chipola College ($1,133), and Manatee Technical College ($1,808).
| School | In-State Tuition | Out-of-State Tuition | Net Price | Median Debt |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Florida College | $2,994 | $11,460 | $804 | N/A |
| Chipola College | $3,120 | $8,950 | $1,133 | N/A |
| Manatee Technical College | N/A | N/A | $1,808 | N/A |
| South Florida State College | $3,165 | $11,859 | $3,877 | $7,368 |
| Pensacola State College | $2,361 | $9,463 | $3,957 | $7,500 |
| Florida State College at Jacksonville | $2,657 | $9,631 | $4,128 | $13,562 |
| Gulf Coast State College | $2,370 | $8,635 | $4,709 | $7,147 |
| Pasco-Hernando State College | $3,155 | $12,032 | $5,203 | $9,535 |
| Florida Gateway College | $3,100 | $11,747 | $5,364 | $6,992 |
| Miami Dade College | $2,838 | $9,661 | $5,463 | $9,252 |
Most Florida LPN programs require 1,350 clock hours to graduate. At schools like Santa Fe College, Florida Gateway College, and Eastern Florida State College, that total encompasses both classroom instruction and hands-on clinical training. Some programs, such as Tampa Medical College, pack 1,616 hours into an accelerated 46-week format. Full-time students typically finish in 11 to 14 months, while part-time pathways can extend to 18 months to accommodate working adults and career changers.
The standard LPN certificate in Florida aligns with the state's Health Science Core – Practical Nursing framework (program code 8418400). Full-time cohorts at public technical and community colleges usually span three semesters, starting each January or August. For example, Eastern Florida State College admits a new class every January and delivers its 1,350-hour curriculum in a continuous, on-campus sequence. Students who need a slower pace can often choose part-time or evening tracks, adding several months to the timeline but keeping the total clock-hour requirement unchanged.
The curriculum is built around foundational nursing knowledge and direct patient care skills. Core courses include:
Each course blends theory with lab practice and culminates in clinical application. The curriculum meets Florida Board of Nursing standards, ensuring graduates are prepared for entry-level practice and ready to take the NCLEX-PN licensing exam.
Clinical training accounts for roughly half of total program hours. Santa Fe College, for instance, allocates 50% of its 1,350 clock hours to direct patient care experiences. That translates to about 675 hours of supervised practice, falling within the typical 500–700 hour range for Florida LPN programs. Clinical schedules at Santa Fe run Monday through Sunday with varying shifts, reflecting real-world nursing demands.
Rotations take place in a variety of settings:
Programs arrange placements locally, often partnering with major healthcare systems to expose students to diverse patient populations.
While LPN didactic coursework is delivered on-campus, many Florida programs build flexibility into clinical schedules. Santa Fe College's clinical rotations include weekend and evening options, which helps students balance other responsibilities. Several schools offer part-time or evening-only tracks specifically designed for working adults. These paths reduce the weekly time commitment but extend the overall length of the program, often to 18 months or longer. Prospective students should confirm scheduling details directly with each program, as not all schools provide weekend or evening cohorts.
Most Florida LPN programs keep admission requirements straightforward, but the most affordable and in-demand schools are growing more selective.
Many Florida community and technical colleges have open enrollment or first-come-first-served policies, but seats in nursing programs are limited. Even at open-admission schools, the practical nursing cohort can be small, so meeting the minimums is no guarantee.
Palm Beach State makes this explicit: hitting the required 75 HESI cumulative score does not assure admission. Eastern Florida State sets a 69% TEAS Reading cutoff, but the final selection weighs more than test scores. South Florida State College’s requirement for three professional references adds another filter.
At the less selective end, Florida Gateway College stands out. Its published TEAS cutoff of 55% is the lowest among listed programs, making it a strong option if your exam scores are a concern. The school itself describes admission as “relatively less competitive,” so meeting that threshold puts you in a good position.
Florida's practical nursing schools have moved a growing share of lecture content online since 2020, but no program in the state has gone fully remote, and none legally can.
The Florida Board of Nursing requires supervised clinical hours before you can sit for the NCLEX-PN. That means every accredited LPN program includes in-person skills labs and clinical rotations in hospitals, long-term care facilities, or clinics. When a school advertises an online LPN program, it is describing a hybrid model: theory courses (anatomy, pharmacology, nursing fundamentals) delivered through a learning platform, with labs and patient care done on site.
Several schools listed here run hybrid formats. ATA Career Education in Spring Hill offers a 15-month hybrid program with day and evening class times and no entrance exam. Fortis Institute-Port Saint Lucie blends online coursework with hospital clinicals, and the Pensacola campus uses a similar blended structure. William T McFatter Technical College in Davie also offers hybrid elements alongside its 12-month schedule.
Beyond the ranked list, Manatee Technical College runs an evening hybrid track that splits roughly 688 on-campus hours against 661 online hours across 11 months.1 Lake Technical College offers a part-time hybrid option. Rasmussen University's 15-month program pairs online classes with in-person weekend sessions. United Career Institute's 12-month online/hybrid format lets students attend lectures from home while completing labs at the school or at partner healthcare facilities.2 Tampa Medical College combines synchronous and asynchronous instruction with on-campus labs and clinicals.3
Hybrid delivery suits students holding down a job or managing childcare: lectures can be watched on your schedule, and campus trips shrink to lab days and clinical shifts. The catch is that clinical placement is rarely flexible. Rotations are scheduled by the school at contracted sites, often during weekday hospital hours, and distance learners still have to show up. Before enrolling, confirm how far the clinical sites sit from your home and whether evening or weekend rotations exist. A shorter program on paper means little if the clinical calendar conflicts with your shift work.
Florida's 2024 statewide NCLEX-PN pass rate of 80.8% sits below the national average of 88.4%, making program choice a critical factor in your licensure journey. The licensure process is straightforward, but every step matters from graduation to exam day.
Processing timelines vary, but most candidates wait four to six weeks from the date they submit a complete application to receiving their ATT. Plan your exam date accordingly, especially if you're targeting a specific job start date.
Program pass rates are a transparent indicator of how well a school prepares students for licensure. The Florida Center for Nursing publishes quarterly pass rate data by program, and the NCSBN dashboard lets you filter results by state and year. While 80.8% is the 2024 Florida average, many programs consistently outperform that number. Schools with pass rates below 70% warrant extra scrutiny.
When researching LPN programs in Florida, look for multi-year trends. A single down year might reflect a cohort anomaly, but a persistent dip signals deeper issues. Our directory of accredited LPN programs in Florida highlights schools with strong track records, and you can verify each program's latest rates directly through the Board of Nursing's education portal.
Most LPN programs build NCLEX review into the final semester. Beyond classwork, you can:
On exam day, expect a five-hour window for up to 205 questions (computerized adaptive format). Arrive early, bring your ATT and ID, and avoid bringing any personal items into the testing room. After you pass, the Board issues your Florida LPN license, and you're ready to begin your career.
Licensed Practical Nurses in Florida earn a median annual wage of $60,080, with the top quarter earning over $63,260. For nurses who advance to an RN role through a bridge program, median earnings jump to $82,850. While LPN employment is projected to grow 3% nationally, RN roles are expanding faster at 5%, underscoring the value of continued education.
| Measure | Florida LPNs | Florida RNs |
|---|---|---|
| 25th Percentile | $53,430 | $77,070 |
| Median Annual Wage | $60,080 | $82,850 |
| 75th Percentile | $63,260 | $99,260 |
| Mean (Average) | $60,320 | $88,200 |
| Total Employment | 36,470 | 218,100 |
| National Projected Job Growth (2024-2034) | 3% | 5% |
If you're considering a career as a licensed practical nurse in Florida, you likely have questions about program length, costs, and licensure. Below, we answer the most common questions students ask about LPN training in the Sunshine State.
Not every solid Florida LPN program lands in the top 10, and geography usually matters more than position on a list. The directory below covers additional schools from the panhandle through north central Florida, Tampa Bay, the Treasure Coast, South Florida, and the southwest coast, with delivery format and a short note on how each program is structured. Cost and financial aid details for these schools appear in the cost comparison above.
