Many of us have studied Latin simply because we enjoy it, and many have found use for it when studying something like philosophy or history where Latin materials are commonplace. However, I am not looking for personal experience or anecdotal evidence here.
Is there research on the effect of studying Latin? How does the individual and especially the institution benefit from Latin? The core question is this: If I want to convince my university not to discontinue Latin, what are the most impressive and trustworthy results about the benefits of studying Latin?
Latin is sometimes seen as unprofitable or otherwise useless, and I am looking for counterarguments — preferably quantitative. The first thing that comes to mind (and which I might be able to support with anecdotal evidence) is that the ability to use Latin material is necessary to get funding for research projects in fields where much of the material is in Latin. The second thing is that I suppose many people will greatly benefit from a basic knowledge of Latin although very few will need to specialize in it, and this may not be detected by some of the metrics used to assess the viability of a subject. The issue with these arguments of mine is that I can't back them up by anything but reasoning; I don't know of any research on the usefulness or lack thereof of Latin. Can you help me find strong and sufficiently well researched reasons to argue for Latin? I am not asking you to do original research, I am asking you to point to materials that could make a strong case for defending Latin.