Idea: MOOC's Completion Problem and Loss Aversion

A few days ago, in the Instructional Design group on LinkedIn, Franciso Costa posted a thread about an upcoming MOOC on The Future of Storytelling. In a skimming rush, I misread the meaning behind the title, but it resulted in a 'happy accident' that triggered an idea....

One of the common criticisms of MOOCs is their generally low completion rate (most people who start a course do not finish it). Although it's arguable whether or not this actually IS a negative (different students have different goals, after all), if some future MOOC host does have the explicit goal of maximizing completion rates, I wonder if there might be an angle to play by exploiting most people's feelings about money and loss?

I'd originally misread the thread's title ("This course is for FREE with certificate") to mean that "if you complete the course and receive a certificate, it'll be free. Otherwise, (if you sign up but do NOT complete it), it'll cost you $X." 

Hmmmm.....

This is clearly a knee-jerk idea that blossomed out of my reading haste and, thus, probably has some holes in it, but maybe there is something here.... Would this be a viable alternative approach to addressing the "completion problem" that might provide the extra 'umph' some learners need to stick with the course and see it through? Maybe it could be a sliding scale concept, where learners receive progressively larger discounts (starting at 0% and running up to 100%) with the number of sessions/modules/units they complete?

Does the whole psychological principle of "loss aversion" apply here?  Perhaps people will be more interested in NOT losing money than they are about gaining the (free!) knowledge/skills associated with the course's content (as sad a commentary as that may be)?

Thoughts? Thanks!