India, Sept. 28 -- For the better part of a decade, executive education in India was framed as a binary. You either went fully online, trading the classroom for convenience, or you carved out two years for a full-time residential MBA. Somewhere around 2021, a third option got dismissed as a compromise: neither fully digital nor fully in-person, just a patchwork of both. That framing was wrong, and the data from the last eighteen months makes the case plainly.

Globally, preferences are actually swinging back toward in-person learning. GMAC's 2025 Prospective Students Survey found close to three in four candidates worldwide now prefer full-time, in-person programmes, the strongest pull toward the classroom since before the pandemic. On the...