With the expansion of distance education, the problem of over-education in the system of distance education has emerged, but it seems that none of the existing empirical studies have addressed this issue. This study conducts an empirical and comparative analysis of the problem of over-education between distance education and face-to-face education by analyzing nationwide adult data in China. The empirical results show that distance-education learners are more likely to experience over-education compared to face-to-face education learners; however, over-education does not have a significantly negative relationship with distance-education learners' income.