There's a document out on scouting.org that seems to discourage many of the common practices that enable merit badge events (like fairs, universities, etc.) and that also seems to discourage bad practices that are very common in almost all merit badge summer camps and winter camps.
I wonder if this will indicate a trend away from the current merit badge mills that prevail across the country...
The document is "Merit Badge Group Instruction Guide" and is available here: https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/512-066_WEB.pdf
Some interesting points that appear there...