A congressional hearing Wednesday assembled a panel of six people in higher education — including Georgia Southern University President Brooks Keel — to answer a question that is on many minds today: How can a college education be kept affordable yet also produce the highly skilled workers needed for a 21st-century workforce?Keel offered an innovative idea that Georgia Southern hopes to have in place soon.“We are actively exploring the concept of industry-sponsored, forgivable, worker-readiness educational loans, awarded to students who participate in co-ops and subsequently commit to working with the sponsoring industry for a one- to three-year term following graduation,” he told the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce. “This will further reduce new-employee turnover and increase the return on investment made by industry in such programs. Such assistance may also provide need-based scholarship opportunities for many of our financially challenged students.”He added that such forgivable loans, especially those aimed at students for whom college would otherwise be out of reach, “can have a profound impact on preparing a highly trained and diverse workforce.”“The economic prosperity of this country depends heavily on job creation and on the availability of a highly skilled, educated and trained workforce,” he said.