"Fewer and fewer students from Iowa's low-income families are being educated by the state's public universities, despite their mission to educate Iowans of diverse socioeconomic status, U.S. Department of Education data show," the Des Moines Register reports. "Iowa ranked nearly last in the United States for the share of Pell Grant recipients - a common measurement of low-income students - enrolled at its public universities in the 2007-08 school year. Only public universities in the District of Columbia, Rhode Island and Wyoming served lower percentages, although such comparisons are imperfect because factors vary state to state. ... The job of providing college educations to low-income students has increasingly fallen to Iowa's community colleges. It is also true in Iowa, and uncommon nationally, that more low-income students now study at the state's 30 private colleges and universities than at the far larger Iowa State University, University of Iowa and University of Northern Iowa."