IIRC data-* attributes are used mainly for CSS and Javascript. You'll want to use the value attribute

<option value="{{ $dept->dept_code }}">{{ $dept->dept_name }}</option>

gizzmo said:

IIRC data-* attributes are used mainly for CSS and Javascript. You'll want to use the value attribute

<option value="{{ $dept->dept_code }}">{{ $dept->dept_name }}</option>

thanks gizzmo, how do we retrieve it then? I think Input::all() will not do the trick.

\Input:all();

Will give you all fields, so you would need to do something like

$input = \Input::all();
$var = $input['select'];

This assumes your select is named "select":

<select name="select">
,,,,

You might want to also look at "request" in the docs as well: http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/requests#retrieving-input