It only feels like that because the novice, apprentice, and adept spells lose there effectiveness. If they added damage scaling , using runes, flames , projectiles, and cloaks would all be viable again and we would have an awesome amount of variety. I am using a mod that does just that and it absolutely breathes new life in the magic system.
Even if they scaled, look at how all of the spells ultimately work. With the small exception of runes/wall/cloak spells, everything else is ultimately point and damage, so there will be a clear winner among them and you just need to spam that.
As for rune/wall, again, do you really need to place that rune, or just throw another thunderbolt for same damage? Even if runes did more damage than thunderbolt, the situation just flips and essentially same deal continues.
To copy and paste myself from another post...
Few simple tweaking could have made destruction so much more rich in options and just plain old fun.
First, remove magic cost reduction enchants, reduce high level spell's cast cost by at least half, and create enchants that add flat damage (adding percentages always end up breaking, flat numbers can be balanced better). Something like 20 extra damage max per slot.
Second, I would've changed rune to about 3 ~ 4 times in size, and change their function so that they lower resist of all those who are inside the rune. Top it off with really high mana cost, maybe even percentage mana cost, like 25% of your total mana. This will add spacial advantages/disadvantages to every fight.
Third, impact has to go. Sorry, but perma stun lock is just blatantly not fun. Ice should be the source of enemy movement control. Instead, dual casting would bring element-unique effect to the table, like fire cause secondary explosion for 30 ~ 50 extra damage to targets that were already on fire, frost cause ground beneath the target to freeze over, causing other enemies to slip and fall in that area (if that's too hard, then just another 10% snare on top of frost's regular snare), and lightning would add visible charge to the enemy, and at max charge on out door, the enemy would be struck by lightning for 100 damage or so.
Fourth, add more flavor to the perks. Fire perks should let the fire burn for longer duration (both fire on target and on environment), frost one should increase the snare, with something like base frost being 20% and 2 perks bringing it up to 35% and 50%, and lightning should exclusively get stamina and magicka drain. So fire for maximum damage, frost for movement control, and lightning to reduce combat capabilities of the enemy.
I think most of those could be tweaked in since there are many in game stuff of similar effects.