I suggest when unsure and don't know, get back to basics.

Determine a goal you’d like to work toward financially, is it “financial freedom” (whatever that means to you), buying a business, becoming self employed, becoming a full time real estate investor, having enough cash for your kids college education, having enough to retire, becoming a centi millionaire, etc.3.

You basically outlined your issues and no one can help you with that. 1) The market is the market.

It will familiarize you with the basic terminology and benefits.

They charge me 7% for the basic guaranteed rent service (along with the listing fee) and then if they do manage any of the tenant work orders there is an additional fee on top of that because I only signed up at the lowest level where owners manage work orders. 

In Madison, and I assume your market, we have always had discount broker options to basically just get your listing on the MLS and not much else as well as sellers just exposing it to the market themselves off the MLS and hoping to maybe pay no buyer agent commission, where the buyers have no agent they are working with or the buyer agrees to pay their agent directly. 

Please note the information provided below is a layman's definition designed to provide a basic understanding for the general audience.

But those figures do include the onsite-manager, who basically just pays a discounted rent in exchange for doing the onsite-manager duties.

We're still a ways off doing any transactions, and when we do I can probably figure out the basic financials on my own.

If you do the math it makes much more sense than paying dorm fees And your kid gets a good education on property ownership and management in the process.