Massachusetts’ nonprofit student-loan agency, which stopped taking applications for federally backed education loans in April, announced today that it would also be unable to offer private loans for the fall semester because of turmoil in the financial markets. Private loans account for the bulk of the Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority’s business.

Thomas Graf, the authority’s executive director, said in a statement on the agency’s Web site that it was advising students and families to seek federally backed loans through other sources, and after maximizing those options to seek private loans through financial companies. A spokeswoman told the Associated Press that the agency hoped to be able to provide some financing later this year, perhaps in time for spring-semester tuition bills.

Similar agencies in at least eight other states are among the scores of lenders that have restricted their student-loan offerings because of the credit crisis. Congress and the Bush administration acted in May to shore up the student-loan industry, assuring lenders that they could sell new student loans to the government or receive a low-interest line of credit to issue loans. But the terms of those packages have not persuaded some lenders to resume student loans. —Charles Huckabee