A new federal law, the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, requires that all Stafford, PLUS and consolidation loans for which the initial disbursement has not been made by June 30, 2010, must be made under the Federal Direct Loan Program.

Because of the law’s required transition to the Direct Loan Program, many students may leave school with at least two different types of federal student loans: Direct Loans and loans issued through the Federal Family Education Loan Program. In the FFELP, loans are funded by private lenders. In addition, because the credit crunch prompted many lenders to sell FFELP loans to the federal government to raise new loan capital during the past couple years, many students may actually have at least three different kinds of federal student loans, and as a result may be making student loan payments to several different organizations. Here are some resources to help you manage these different federal loan types:

Loan information. The National Student Loan Data System, commonly known as NSLDS, displays information about all your federal student loans — as well as federal grants you may have received. To access your loan information on NSLDS, the website will ask you to provide your Social Security number, the first two letters of your last name, your date of birth and the Personal Identification Number — the PIN — you received when you filled out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. If you do not have a PIN, you can get one through the U.S. Department of Education PIN website. Note that you cannot get information about private student loans from the NSLDS website; you should contact your lender for this information.

Loan consolidation. To help student loan borrowers whose loans are held by several different entities, the federal student loan programs provide the opportunity for loan consolidation. Loan consolidation permits you to combine multiple federal student loans in a single new loan. As a result, you may be able to make only one monthly payment to one organization, instead of multiple student loan payments to multiple organizations. The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 contains a special one-time loan consolidation provision for students who have at least one loan that has not yet entered repayment. For a one-year period, between July 1, 2010, and June 30, 2011, you may be able to get a Direct Consolidation loan for these federal student loans if you have at least two of the following loan types: Direct Loans, FFELP loans held by an eligible FFELP lender or FFELP loans that have been sold to the U.S. Department of Education under emergency legislation. Note that by consolidating Stafford or PLUS loans, you will lose eligibility for the six-month grace period on your Stafford loans and six month post-enrollment deferment period on your PLUS loans. For more information, visit the Direct Consolidation Loan website.