jQuery select box validation

Since you cannot set value="" within your first option, you’ll need to create your own rule using the built-in addMethod() method.

jQuery:

$(document).ready(function () {

    $('#myform').validate({ // initialize the plugin
        rules: {
            year: {
                selectcheck: true
            }
        }
    });

    jQuery.validator.addMethod('selectcheck', function (value) {
        return (value != '0');
    }, "year required");

});

HTML:

<select name="year">
    <option value="0">Year</option>
    <option value="1">1955</option>
    <option value="2">1956</option>
</select>

Working Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/tPRNd/

---

Original Answer: (Only if you can set value="" within the first option)

To properly validate a select element with the jQuery Validate plugin simply requires that the first option contains value="". So remove the 0 from value="0" and it’s fixed.

jQuery:

$(document).ready(function () {

    $('#myform').validate({ // initialize the plugin
        rules: {
            year: {
                required: true,
            }
        }
    });

});

HTML:

<select name="year">
    <option value="">Year</option>
    <option value="1">1955</option>
    <option value="2">1956</option>
</select>

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/XGtEr/