Since higher education qualifications and digital transition are considered key factors for economic development and individual opportunities, distance learning has been presented as a solution to improve the labor force’s skills and employability. However, such links were seldom studied systematically in specific contexts, and doubts exist regarding online programs. Based on the results of three successive follow-up surveys to the graduates of the Portuguese distance learning public university (Universidade Aberta), from 2011 to 2018 (n = 1358), our article examines the graduates’ perception of acquired transversal competences, in relation to employability and social mobility gains. The statistical analysis points out a positive perception of transversal competences development, especially analytical capacity, autonomy, and communication, although some concerns were raised regarding digital skills, teamwork, job search skills, and social capital. The impacts on employability and socioeconomic mobility are positive for most students, but variable according to analyzed competences, and tend to occur mostly through internal mobility rather than through job search skills or entrepreneurship. Although exploratory, such findings allow some final considerations regarding the effective ability of higher education distance learning to enhance economic growth and employability, through transversal competences, as well as to sketch some suggestions to improve such ability.

There is an increasing need for state-of-the-art Central Auditory Processing assessment for Portuguese native speakers, applicable as early as possible. As a contribution to answering this need, this paper presents a new battery for Central Auditory Processing assessment for European Portuguese applicable to children aged 5 and above, named BAPA-PE, providing information regarding test selection and development. The battery consists of six behavioral tests: Staggered Spondaic Words (SSW) for European Portuguese, Filtered Speech, Speech in Noise, Detection Interval in Noise, Duration, and Frequency Pattern. The normative data for children aged 5 to 12 are also reported. A sample was obtained of 217 subjects without ear pathology and with typical development. Each age group was composed of at least 30 children. All children were evaluated using pure tone audiometry, speech audiometry, impedance, and otoacoustic emissions. Normative scores are reported for each of the six auditory processing tests. The assessment is applicable to young children (aged 5 and 6). The statistical analyses showed significant effects in scores of Age for all tests and of Ear for several tests. The main result from the work presented, the Auditory Processing Assessment Battery—European Portuguese (BAPA-PE), is available for clinical use with normative data. This battery is a new tool for behaviorism assessment of European Portuguese speakers with suspected central auditory pathology and for monitoring the results of auditory training.

In European Portuguese (EP), intonation has a grammatical function. In the available research in EP intonation, production imperatives are said to have an F0 rising-falling contour of large amplitude and are described as having an intonation contour similar to wh-questions, although they present rhythmic differences (Viana, 1987). A possible increase in pitch span was also reported. Two perception experiments were developed to identify sound-sequence features of imperative intonation prototype. The results showed that the major intonation distinction between declaratives and imperatives in EP was related both with local events, that determine utterance contour shape, namely F0 movements, and global events that locate F0 levels.

Nasal sounds frequencies in European Portuguese represent 21% of Português Fundamental corpus sounds (Nascimento et al. 1987), revealing how nasality plays an important role in this language and how a speech problem affecting nasality can interfere severely in one’s speech intelligibility. In order to obtain the first standard nasometric values for European Portuguese we developed two tests (syllable repetition and text reading) and collected data from 25 adults. Preliminary results showed that: oral stimuli achieved an average nasalance score of 10%; syllables with nasal consonant and nasal vowel achieved 77% and the reading passages with nasal saturation presented an average score of 44%. Considering these results, we acknowledge the existence of three different levels of normal nasality.