In this series of essays, merged institutional and community-representative datasets are analyzed to explore interstate variability in community college expenditure and revenue, education production, and the cost of community college completions. Evidence is presented that factors, such as socioeconomic variables, instructor inputs, size and degree of urbanization of institutions, are significant across states in explaining variability in revenue, expenditure, production, and cost. By use of these models, factors are explored that potentially mediate relationships between spending, revenue, cost, and student outcomes. These essays and the findings within make contributions to the literature on community college finance by presenting empirical evidence that national datasets can be used to estimate financial equity across states, the association between instructor investments and student outcomes, the cost of community college completions, and what factors mediate these relationships. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]