Yale University will offer a web-based physician assistant [PA] master's program, school officials announced Tuesday.

The Ivy League school is collaborating with education technology company 2U Inc. to "offer an online version of its decades-old program in the fast-growing field," Wall Street Journal reported. The program will enable online students to receive the same high-quality training as their on-campus counterparts without the financial burden and stress of relocating, while also encouraging PAs to learn and work in their local communities.

In contrast with most physician associate programs, the online program also will recruit student cohorts three times per year instead of one, allowing qualified students to start their education and training as soon as they are ready. The program also will feature in-person immersion experiences that allow students to collaborate with classmates and professors on-site at the Yale campus in New Haven, CT.

"PA program students could come to campus during the first week or two in the program to experience Yale," said program director James Van Rhee. "Then at the end of the first year, they would come back to learn clinical skills and again at the end of the clinical year to do testing. A distant student could also do a rotation at Yale New Haven Hospital."

Yale University's campus-based version has space for only about 40 students each year, while more than 1,000 apply to the program.

Lucas Swineford, executive director of Yale's office of digital dissemination and online learning, said the Ivy League school program shows that this is a "coming-of-age" for online education.

"The stigma has certainly changed over the past five or six years. This is a Yale degree," Swineford told the Wall Street Journal.

The new program will have the same prerequisites and same tuition as the on-campus version of Yale's physician assistant degree -- $83,162 for 28 months.