Absolutely. For years, governments have been cutting universities' funding: for both pure research and for teaching — especially in the humanities. 

"Academic" staff spend a lot of time chasing private funding and doing applied research. and we all know about student debt. The MBA (more bullshit, anyone) is an "educational" innovation of these times in which knowledge must have a measurable monetary return if it is going to "compete" for it's place in academia.

So there's a growing ethos of "student" as "client" — so you do not fail them, that would be "bad teaching" and, as long as they pay their fees, students are generally nudged through a "pass" of some sort.

This exacerbates "competition" between tertiary level institutions of all sorts and a demand for new types of academic leadership (businessmen rather than scholars and philosophers)… so the spiral accelerates.

To someone who grew up in a time of academic freedom and passions for knowledge for its own sake… it's totally odious. To newer generations, it's "improvement" and a necessary response to the "demands" of "The Economy". 

Education has been commercialised and commodified… even the obnoxious old "Oxbridge"/Ivy League elite is elite no longer, not without an MBA. But, with the benefit of contrast and comparison, I'm finding "ivory towers" look rather more alluring than they used to.

Could MBA mean redneck dressed up with a white shirt and tie?

It's rather a re-moulding of the conscience that restrains most people from blind, manipulative greed. It shapes the vassal creature of The Economy. It understands "ethics" as a subject in which one can gain a "pass", then post on the office wall. It makes rednecks look relatively civilised.

Considering the job market also, I would tend to agree Naman, that an MBA is a coveted degree these days, and people are being groomed for the corporate world. To get a decent job with other degrees, such as the arts and humanities and social sciences is becoming increasingly difficult, and undesirable. I used to work in social services, and people with MBA's were being hired to "promote" and market unemployed and marginalized individuals ...and are often untrained understanding or empathizing with the roots of social problems, nor in counselling skills, other than a few patronizing "techniques" they might learn on the job, and advocacy has been replaced by organizational/ brand loyalty. It's increasingly become a business, even in the non-profit sector. We're seeing it more and more. Truly helping people overcome their barriers  to inclusion and participation in society  (in all areas, not just economic), encouraging more grassroots community development, is inefficient and not cost effective (not seen to be...it's become short sighted). People with social work  and advocacy skills and training are increasingly leaving certain areas that were once seen as social work oriented. Quantitative data has become the standard measure of an individual's and program's success, even though many people still understand that the numbers attached to the individual does not equal "success" from a more holistic point of view...much of that (unfortunate, imo) change in perception comes from the business trained world I think.