Well I didn’t go into ALL the $ details in the first post 
plus I’m god awful tired and math is NOT my subject…
The difference is actually about $26,000 (note those calculators online include travel, books etc…see more below). DD has a $5k a year loan (in addition to the $5,500 fed) and we stretched our EFC on our end ($21k, $4k plus our EFC of $17k) Between her work study, summer earnings and personal savings from working summers for years, she pays for all her non-tuition/non-meal plan/housing expenses (ie all books, art supplies, entertainment, sundries etc) so we don’t see any of those “add in” expenses on our end. And she’s a frugal kid by nature, we’re 2 years into this and no problems. Also there’s no real “other” (the $3.5k in their calculator) or travel expenses.
So she really has $10k+ yearly in loans. And she’s both helped cover her tuition in a pinch and plans to pay her debt down (but right now she’s using it as a ‘nest egg’ for all school supplies).
I’m not sugar-coating it, art school IS expensive…but when we ran all the #s for all the other schools (except for our SUNY) none were substantially less expensive (some looked like they were but they were offering more loans). And our kid was willing to really hustle to make RISD work for all of us.