Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education institutions in Turkey have started to give the courses through distance education in order to prevent the spread of the virus. Unlike classical distance education, it is absolutely necessary to know the characteristics of these unprecedented distance education practices, for which students, teachers, and educational institutions were caught unprepared. Based on such a need, this study aimed to determine the metaphorical perceptions of higher education students regarding the concept of "distance education" and carried out in line with the qualitative phenomenological research design method. The study consisted of 197 female and male students who attended different classes at Kilis 7 Aralık University, Faculty of Islamic Sciences in the 2020-2021 academic year and participated in distance education from different settlements such as villages, districts, and towns. The relevant data were collected using a semi-structured form in which the students who continued their compulsory distance education due to the COVID-19 pandemic were asked to write a metaphor and their justification for generating such a metaphor by completing the gaps in the statement "Distance education is like … because …".