Developing internal quality assurance has been high on the agenda of European higher education policy in the past ten years, but it has mainly been developed with a focus on processes in individual institutions. ”The Swedish Master Project” has enlarged the scope of internal quality assurance in a unique collaboration between Gothenburg, Lund and Uppsala universities to initiate jointly comparative internal quality assurance. The paper will discuss the challenges encountered and the benefits of the co-operation in the area of joint internal quality assurance, especially the introduction of new degrees. The presentation will particularly address questions related to: The collection and use of key figures and the problems that they raise, especially when used for benchmarking; The challenges and benefits of joint institutional collaboration in internal quality assurance.