Thanks for the quick response @jerparx. I checked and I am in Yoast SEO 14.7.
I did solve the issue, but I still have no idea about the root cause. I had selected both a parent category (colleges) + one of its subcategories (Alaska).
To get both of these in the URL, I had to deselect the parent category (selecting only the subcategory) and publish. This changed the URL successfully.
Then I could re-check the parent category, update, and it still showed the full permalink URL with colleges/alaska/postname.
So now I’m confused and unsure if this was related to Yoast at all. I appreciate your response and time ??