Aspen is the cheapest honest route into nursing. Cheap is not the same as free of cost.
The monthly figure is real, the interest genuinely is zero, and the nursing programmes genuinely are CCNE-accredited. What the figure hides is three things: that it is an offer subject to a credit check, how many years you pay it for, and what the credential can and cannot do once you hold it.
We support working nurses across seventeen online programmes. Nobody here earns anything whichever one you pick, which is the only reason we can tell you that for some nurses Aspen is the obvious answer and for others it is a trap.
The monthly figure is the marketing. The length is the product.
Aspen does not price a nursing degree the way its competitors do. There is no per-credit bill that rises with how many courses you take, and no per-term fee that punishes a slow month. There is one programme price and a fixed monthly deduction that continues until it is met.
That design removes the risk of pace, which is genuinely valuable if you have ever stalled in a self-paced course. What it substitutes is duration — and duration is the thing a monthly figure is very good at hiding.
Every twelfth bar is a year. Three years and ten months of payments for the RN to BSN — the shortest commitment Aspen offers, and already longer than most nurses picture when they hear the monthly figure.
Totals are Aspen's own published programme costs — $14,750 for the RN to BSN, $20,875 to $21,150 for the MSN, $30,995 to $31,270 for the RN to MSN bridge and $39,030 for the DNP. Monthly rates are Aspen's published Monthly Payment Plan: $325 for bachelor's, $415 for master's, $450 for doctoral, at a 0% fixed rate with no down payment. Months are the two divided. Your own figure moves with transfer credit, retakes and books. Checked August 2026.
What the price is, and what it is not
Aspen is unusually straight about its money. It is worth being equally straight about the parts that are easy to skim past, because each one is a real term of the deal rather than a criticism of it.
Nursing accreditation
The BSN, MSN and DNP programmes are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education — the accreditor that matters for licensure and for most employers.
CCNEInstitutional accreditation
Aspen is accredited by the DEAC, which is nationally recognised rather than regional. This is the single most consequential fact on this page, and the next section is entirely about it.
Nationalnot regionalThe monthly plan
A private education loan at 0% fixed interest with no down payment. The zero is genuine. It is still private credit rather than federal aid, so it sits outside income-driven repayment, federal deferment and forgiveness programmes.
Private credit0% APRGetting the monthly plan at all
Aspen states that approval “is contingent upon consent to a soft credit inquiry and a minimum TransUnion credit score of 600”. The advertised monthly figure is therefore an offer subject to approval, not a published price everyone receives. It is the single most important sentence in Aspen’s payment terms and it appears almost nowhere else online.
600 TransUnionsoft inquiryArizona pre-licensure BSN
A separate, campus-based programme for people becoming nurses. It closed after NCLEX pass rates fell below the state minimum. It is not the online RN to BSN or MSN that working nurses enrol in, and the two are constantly confused online.
Closeddifferent programmePracticum, on the graduate routes
As at most online schools, securing a site and preceptor is your responsibility. Aspen makes no placement pledge, so build the search into your plan from the start.
You arrange itWhere an Aspen credential can actually go
National accreditation is not a lesser qualification, and it is not a warning. It is a portability question, and portability only matters in the directions you intend to travel. Here is each direction, answered plainly.
Licensure and your board
CCNE accreditation is what state boards look for. This is the direction most nurses are actually travelling, and it is not in question.
Your current employer
Most hospitals accept a CCNE-accredited BSN for clinical ladders and BSN-in-ten requirements. Worth one email to confirm before you enrol rather than after.
Tuition reimbursement
Some employer benefit schemes specify a regionally accredited institution in the small print. If you are counting on reimbursement to make the maths work, confirm the wording before you commit.
A graduate programme somewhere else
Regionally accredited universities set their own rules on accepting nationally accredited credit, and some decline it. If your plan is an Aspen BSN followed by an NP programme at a state university, that is the question to settle first — not last.
Transferring credits out mid-course
If you start Aspen and later want to move, credit may not travel with you. That risk is highest on the longest route: sixty-eight months is a long time to be committed to one institution.
The honest summary: if Aspen is your destination — a BSN to satisfy an employer, or an MSN you intend to finish there — it is arguably the best value in American nursing education. If Aspen is meant to be a stepping stone to a degree somewhere else, the stone may not connect to the next one. Settle that single question before you sign anything.
Is Aspen the right call for you?
Five questions. It is built to say no, because for a meaningful share of nurses the honest answer here is no — and this is a far cheaper place to find that out than month thirty.
Question one of five
What are you actually trying to reach?
Set against what else you could do with the money
Each of these names the nurse the other school serves better. A page that recommends the same school every time is a brochure with a table in it.
Twenty minutes before you sign forty months of credit.
Free, no obligation, and nobody on this side is paid whichever way you go. If Aspen is right for you we will say so plainly, and we will say the opposite just as plainly.
- Whether national accreditation blocks anything you intend to do next, in your state and at the specific schools you have in mind.
- What your employer's reimbursement scheme actually says about accreditation, before you rely on it.
- Whether the monthly plan or federal aid elsewhere leaves you better off over the full term.
- A straight recommendation, including the schools that beat Aspen for your situation.