I think The Sims as a whole gets repetitive after a while. I haven't played the game normally in months, I just keep creating new families and moving them into new houses with new backstories in mind that I hope will somehow make the gameplay more interesting, but they don't. Sooner or later, my sims all end up doing the same things anyway, and I get bored. Active careers with checklists to work through are the places where the repetitiveness shines brightest, so I definitely don't disagree with the criticism of those and similar gameplay elements. I wouldn't say they go against what The Sims is supposed to be, though.
Of course, that depends entirely on which individual player you ask, and what exactly The Sims is to them. To me, it is a simplified, slightly exaggerated and somewhat supernatural life simulation. And going to work where you sometimes have to do things you don't want or like, because someone or something tells you to do them, is part of life, just like eating, sleeping and going to the bathroom. The latter are things you always have to do one way or another, so even at home, sims have checklists to work through, they're just not as obviously presented as such.
Being able to follow your sims to work, school or university at least lets you have some control over what they're doing (which I very much appreciate, being quite the control freak when it comes to my sims). And you can always choose not to fulfil whatever tasks you are presented with, and live with the consequences. The alternative is sending them to a rabbithole and not seeing them at all for 6-10 sim hours. There's even less control in that.
