Loan Consolidation Programs - Benificial or not ?

Loan Consolidation Programs :
What is Loan Consolidation ?
By Loan consolidation we mean putting all your loans in to one loan. For example putting your Stafford Loan, PLUS loan and Federal Perkins loan under one debt.This loan consolidation is widely beneficial for school, college students

History
The Federal Loan Consolidation Program was created in 1986. In 1998, the United States Congress changed the interest rate to the aforementioned fixed rate weighted mean, effective February 1, 1999. Consolidation loans taken out before that date had a variable interest rate, determined by the individual FDLP loan origination center (e.g., in the case of a university, that university) or FFELP lender (e.g., a third party bank).In 2005, the Government Accountability Office considered consolidating consolidation loans so that they were exclusively managed through the FDLP. Based on several assumptions about future variations in interest rates, the loan volume, the percentage of defaulters, cost estimates from the United States Department of Education, it concluded that while doing so would incur an additional cost of $46 million, caused by the higher administrative costs of the FDLP compared to the FFELP, this would be offset by a $3,100 million saving comprised in part of avoiding $2,500 million in subsidy costs

Current Scenario;
Top Consolidation lenders ranked by total FY 2006 consolidation loan originations
Lender name # of loans Amt of loans ($)
Federal Direct Student Loan Program - 1,169,110 - $19,197,268,873
Swallie Mae - 866,295 - $19,841,423,841
Citibank - 232,126 - $4,843,119,089Nelnet - 198,624 - $4,796,065,812
Next Student - 89,284 - $3,320,024,025JP Morgan Chase - 115,777 - $2,668,451,098
Goal Financial. LLC - 111,426 - $2,494,856,673
College Loan Corporation - 75,360 -$2,245,128,826
AES/PHEAA - 166,730 - $2,037,618,548
Student Loan Express - 114,790 - $1,880,997,383

Source : Wikipedia.

Benefits of Loan Consolidation to students :
As tuition costs are rising with each passing day students need to take debt to fund their studies. But even after graduation the early days jobs sometimes are not so highly payable as required to pay back the loans with by the time would have accrued to more then one. So here the loan consolidation comes handy.
Main benefits of consolidation are :
You can put all your loans under on debt.
Just it makes your loan out go calculation a bit hassle free.A fixed interest rate is charged on the entire loan amount for whole tenure instead of different interest rate as on your previous loans.
Payment period increases, usually it is 10 to 30 years under student loan consolidation programs.
Thus reducing your monthy out go in time when you are not earning at your complete potential.
Due to this most of your loan amount is transferred to later years of career when you are in most probability bound to earn more.
So in all, you relieve your some tension and can concentrate on other interesting aspects of life.

Hazards of consolidation :
As every thing on this planet has got a some kind of ugly face, so does these consolidated loans. As your payment time increases this results in increase of your net interest out go.So you pay more interest here.
Secondly, while consolidation, Loan consolidation company charges you fees. So tell your company to be clear with the fees and pay all the fees upfront so as to save yourself from bad surprises later on.But as at the time when you take consolidated loan this is the best option you have so for building and strengthening your early stage career without bothering much of your loan liabilities, this is a good option for students.
So know as you know the good and rider part of consolidation loans, you can make a choice on which way to go. Weather to choose loan consolidation program or to go with existing loans.
Wishing you a wise and fruitful decision making.