Doctoral students are required to complete 63-66 semester hours (sh) of coursework, including 21 sh in the professional core and 24-27 sh in their selected specialization. The remaining 18 sh are reserved for the dissertation requirement.

A full load of coursework is 9 sh per semester, which is generally 3 courses. (The number of sh per course varies, but 3 is typical.) Because of the rigor of doctoral courses and the fact that doctoral students often hold demanding full-time jobs, many students opt to take only 2 courses per semester. For this reason, the courseware part of the journey may take up to 4 years to complete.