Education: College Credit for Fun

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Some 14,000 years ago, as every myth lover knows, there was a vast cataclysm outside the Strait of Gibraltar and the entire continent of Atlantis sank forever beneath the sea. To rediscover what Plato had once called "a great and wonderful empire," 70 teachers, students and other Atlantisians set off from New York last week for Cadiz, Spain, where they will start a skindiving exploration of the Spanish and Moroccan coastline. "I simply know we will find it because I am psychic," said the project's organizer, Maxine Asher, an audiovisual instruction expert at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles. "Oh, God, how strong the vibrations are these days!"

Pepperdine is granting the explorers up to six credit hours for the six-week expedition (cost per student: $2,800), and that is typical of the increasingly widespread practice of granting academic credit for an extraordinary variety of summer projects. To demonstrate the possibilities, an enterprising Detroit News journalist named James Treloar has compiled a 386-page directory of who is offering what: Educational Vacations '73 (Gale Research; Detroit, $4.95). A sampling of the more unusual entries:

≫ Ecology of the Amazon−University of California. Study of flora, fauna and human inhabitants of the Amazon rain forest. Cost: $1,468.

≫ Golf−Temple University. Analysis of swing by instant video replay and slow-motion film. Cost: $80.

≫ European Seminar in Brass Instruments−Central Michigan University. Students will visit museum collections of brass instruments, attend concerts of brass players, visit factories where brass instruments are made Cost: $750.

≫ Vertebrate Paleontological Techniques−Appalachian State University. Course involves travel to Barmath, N. Dak., where students will excavate a dinosaur skeleton, transport it back to Boone, N.C., and reconstruct it. Cost: $86.50-$ 138 plus expenses.

≫ Land and Life in the Grand Canyon−University of California at Davis. Study of the geology of the Grand Canyon from Lee's Ferry to Temple Bar. Course is conducted from rubber rafts floating down the Colorado River Cost $345.

≫ European Study Tour in Foods−Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Visits to famed European restaurants, food markets, food stores. Itinerary in preparation. Cost: $1,153.

≫ Alaska Sport Fishing−University of Alaska. Fishing on interior Alaska's best streams for grayling, rainbow trout, king salmon. Cost: $136 plus food and lodging.

≫ European Traveling Seminar−UCLA. Students meet and discuss points of view with such notables as Arnold Toynbee, Gunnar Myrdal, Konrad Lorenz and Jacques Monod in their own locales throughout Europe during a course of study on animal behavior and its human implications. Cost-$1,198.

≫ English Folk Dance−Queens College. Students will meet at the Pinewoods Camp in Buzzards Bay, Mass., for one week's instruction in country, morris, sword, and square dancing! Cost: $95 plus room and board.