getting dropdownlist value with el
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I have now been looking like 5 hours for a solution and it should be simpel but i just dont get it.

I got a dropdown list filled with values from my database and now i want to get the selectet item of this dropdown list and set it to a java variable using EL.


here is my attempt  with the <c:set> tag but it wont work

     <select id="dep" name="dep">
                            <c:forEach items="#{departmentBean.depList}" var="item">  
                                <c:set var="#{courseOfStudiesBean.depName}" value="#{item.name}" />
                                <option value="#{item.name}" >#{item.name}</option>  
                            </c:forEach> 
                        </select>