The Princeton Review an educational services company known for its yearly school rankings released its 20th annual list of the Best Value Colleges for 2024.

The list also recognizes the top private and public schools seven ranking categories such as Overall; Financial Aid; Career Placement; Internships; Alumni Networks; Making an Impact; Students with No Demonstrated Need.

These colleges were chosen based on data collected from over 650 administrators and student surveys and from PayScale.com on alumni career and salary statistics between fall 2023 through spring 2024.

The information was weighted against over 40 data points that included academics, costs, financial aid, debt, grad rates, and career/salary data according to the report.

Out 209 schools that made the Best Value list five of them are from New Jersey.

“We highly recommend the schools that made our Best Value Colleges lists for 2024” Rob Franek, Editor-in-Chief of The Princeton Review said in a press release.

“They share three compelling distinctions. All provide outstanding academics. All support their undergraduates with stellar career services. All demonstrate impressive commitments to affordability via extremely generous financial aid for students with need and/or a comparatively low sticker price. Also, good news for students considering these schools: 42% of the colleges admit 50% or more of their applicants.”

Best Value Colleges for 2024

This list is unranked but share three exceptional features:

• The College of New Jersey
• Madison University
• Stevens Institute of Technology
• New Jersey Institute of Technology
• Princeton University

Three New Jersey colleges also ranked in the some of the seven categories ranking list:

• Princeton University ranked No. 2 in the Top 50 Best Value College (Private Schools) and No. 4 in the Top 20 Best Career Placement (Private Schools)
• Stevens Institute of Technology ranked No. 12 in the top 20 Best Career Placement (Private Schools)
• The New Jersey Institute of Technology ranked No. 23 in the Top 50 Best Value Colleges (Public Schools).

In a major upset that is enormously consequential to New Jersey labor unions, longtime Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 9 business manager Michael Maloney lost his bid for re-election to Mike Tranberg by a big margin.

Tranberg beat Maloney, 473-226, a 68%-32% margin.

That means Maloney will lose his posts as president of the New Jersey State Association of Pipe Trades and vice president of the New Jersey State Building & Construction Trades Council.

Maloney’s defeat appears to have resulted from rank-and-file pipefitters’ opposition to the state’s energy policy. These pipefitters supported the now-defunct PennEast gas pipeline project, which was essentially killed by elected officials who had received political and financial support from Maloney.

Senate Majority Conference Leader Vin Gopal (D-Long Branch) had endorsed Tranberg, a Monmouth County resident.

Now the Plumbers and Pipefitters are up for grabs by candidates from both parties seeking to succeed term-limited Gov. Phil Murphy in 2025.

PennEast canceled the controversial $1 billion, 116-mile natural gas pipeline program in September 2021 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that they could use eminent domain to take state-owned land.

The 64-year-old Maloney was elected to his first Local 9 post in 1985, became a business agent in 1994, and won his first election as business manager.  He currently serves as president of the Mercer County Central Labor Council, backing Assemblyman Dan Benson (D-Hamilton) in his successful bid for county executive against five-term Democrat Brian Hughes.

This weekend’s election follows a trend in other states where members of building trades locals are tossing longtime leaders who appear to be backing candidates for public office, including the Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump presidential race, who are not consistent with the views of the rank-and-file membership.

Nearly twenty months after losing his seat in Congress, Tom Malinowski has returned to office as the new Hunterdon County Democratic chairman.

Malinowski defeated Karen Becker, a state committeewoman, by a more than 2-1 margin to secure the party leadership post in his home county.

The former two-term congressman and Assistant U.S. Secretary of State succeeds Arlene Quinones Perez, who did not seek re-election after eleven years as county chair.

Malinowski takes on the leadership of a small Democratic organization in a solidly red county where Republicans hold every county office and enjoy a voter registration edge of 12,391; 50.1%-28.5%.  Democrats have not won a freeholder/county commissioner race in Hunterdon since 1979.

Donald Trump won Hunterdon County by four points in 2020, and Republican Jack Ciattarelli outpolled Gov. Phil Murphy there by nearly nineteen points in 2021.

If county organization lines are indeed replaced by office block voting for good, Malinowski assumes a party post of diminished power and faces the challenge of guiding Hunterdon Democrats into a rebuilding phase.

But first, Malinowski faces a more immediate and achievable task: perhaps helping Biden carry Hunterdon and boosting the total number of votes Democrat Sue Altman receives in New Jersey’s 7th district, his old seat and one of the most politically competitive House races in the U.S.

Malinowski toyed with a rematch against the Republican who narrowly unseated him in 2022, Rep. Thomas Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield), and considered a primary challenge against U.S. Senator Bob Menendez.  He endorsed Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) in advance of a Hunterdon Democratic convention win against the First Lady of New Jersey, Tammy Murphy.

For a short time last year, even before Bob Menendez’ was indicted on federal corruption charges, Malinowski considered challenging Menendez in the Democratic U.S.  Senate primary

Malinowski was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018, unseating five-term Rep. Leonard Lance (R-Clinton Township) by 16,299 votes, 52%-47%, in Trump’s mid-term Democratic wave.  He beat Kean by one percentage point in 2020 and then lost a rematch two years ago by 8,691 votes, 51%-49%.  Malinowski lost Hunterdon three times, getting 44.3% of the county’s vote in 2018, 44.2% in 2020, and 45.8% in 2022.

Perez refused a bid by Malinowski’s team to cast one single vote for a slate of candidates.

Clinton Mayor Janice Kovach is running for vice chair with Malinowski; she had been considered a possible candidate to succeed Perez.   Now she faces a separate vote, with Becker being nominated to run against her.

Also on the Malinowski ticket: Michele Liebtag, the political director of CWA Local 1036, for secretary; and Michael Drulis, the New Brunswick city administrator and the husband of Assemblywoman Mitchelle Drulis (D-Raritan), for treasurer.

The last former congressman to run for county chairman was Kean’s grandfather, Robert W. Kean (R-Livingston).  Robert Kean had spent twenty years in the House and lost a bid for a U.S. Senate seat in 1958.  He became Essex County GOP Chairman in 1959 at a time when Essex was a swing county.

With Kean as county chairman, Republicans won seven of twelve Essex seats in the State Assembly, re-elected their sheriff, Neil Duffy, flipped the county surrogate post, and won three freeholder seats.   But State Sen. Donal Fox (D-South Orange) was re-elected to a second term against a strong Republican candidate, Alfred Clapp (R-Montclair), a former state senator and county court judge.  In 1960, with John F. Kennedy carrying Essex County by 50,000 votes, Democrats won three freeholder seats and the county clerk’s office.

In March, Malinowski wrote an Op-Ed for the New Jersey Globe outlining his views on the future of the Democratic Party in New Jersey.