About · 2027 Edition
About MSWKentucky.com
An independent census of Kentucky's MSW programs — from the steel towns of the northwest to the river cities of the south — with every tuition estimate worked out from published university data and every source linked.
Why Kentucky gets its own census
Kentucky doesn't run one flagship MSW program — it runs a working network. The University of Kentucky’s CSWE-accredited MSW in Lexington pairs campus delivery with online options and in-state tuition for every online student. Around it, public regionals each serve their own corner of the state: Western Kentucky in Bowling Green with a rural-communities emphasis, Northern Kentucky in Highland Heights with a clinical specialization and Cincinnati-metro reach, Eastern Kentucky fully online from Richmond — and Louisville, the state’s largest city, hosting both the Kent School’s MSSW and Spalding’s long-standing campus MSW.
The 2027 edition covers 9 verified Kentucky MSW programs — every one fully CSWE-accredited. The backbone of the census is the true-cost estimate — each program's estimated total tuition, calculated from officially published per-credit rates and credit requirements, with the formula and sources shown for every figure. Where published inputs were unavailable — NKU’s per-credit rate, Brescia’s rate schedule, EKU’s per-credit rate, Pikeville’s rate, Spalding’s rate — we label the gap instead of filling it in.
Who does the counting
Evelyn Hart is an education research specialist whose research focuses on program cost — what graduate degrees actually cost when you work it out from published university data instead of marketing copy. For this Kentucky census, every program's tuition and credit inputs are verified against primary sources, from UK's online tuition schedule to WKU's billing tables, and the verification log is kept for each edition.
How this site stays straight
No university owns, funds, or advertises on this site. Programs cannot pay for a better estimate or a softer write-up — the same published-input rule applies to every program, from a Lexington public flagship to a Pikeville private nonprofit, and the methodology is public.
If you spot a stale rate, a new accreditation decision, or a dead source link — say so. Corrections are checked against primary sources and logged in the verification record.