+1  A: 

You can't return an object from usual <SELECT> tag wich is rendered by Html.DropDownList() method, but only string variable could be returned. In your case ID of EducationLevels object will be send to the server. You should define and use one more custom helper method to reconstruct this object by ID.

Alexander Prokofyev
Thanks, I have done it before but thought I had some strange string returned. But after you said this I remembered I was getting the uniqueidentifier as a string of course. So that is why it went wrong. Was expecting a number or name but got the uniqueidentifier.
bastijn